Misery Quest
by deemsterhood
Summary: Oswin, the young heir to a country barony in the deepest inlands of the Sword Coast, flees heartbreak and tragedy to forge a life she never dreamed for herself—as a servant of Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead and Judge of the Damned. Rated T for sexual content, violence, and horror elements.
1. The Beginning Is Always Today

"Why so shy, child? Are you here to join the order?" The priestess tittered and waved me over to her festival stall, making an exaggerated show of looking me up and down. "A little skinny, perhaps, but Sune doesn't grade for that."

I forced myself to ignore the heat that instantly flooded my cheeks. "Ah. I heard you tell fortunes?" If I resisted my absurd impulse to look nervously around, maybe no one would find my presence here worth notice.

Her face was mischievous as she arched one elegant eyebrow and nodded at Talia, our local priestess of the earth goddess, making her way through the festival crowd, smiling benevolently at everyone. "If that's all you require, Chauntea can sort you out." She glanced at the tent across from her, manned by two acolytes of the god of dawn. "Or one of them. You'll make their day. Lathanderites just _live_ to tell young women about their bright futures of marriage and child-rearing."

I turned away from Talia and plastered on a generically pleasant face, pretending to casually peruse her wares—which I now realized comprised an impressive array of love charms and philters. I didn't want anyone seeing me look at those. Then I saw the goods on the table right in front of me and took an involuntary step backward. If my guess as to the purpose of _those_ was accurate… I crossed my arms uncomfortably.

"I think I'll just go." If I had to choose between prolonging this unbearable interaction, never having sex in all my life, or taking my chances and hoping I wouldn't become pregnant, the first was my least favorite.

She giggled. "I'm _teasing_. I know you don't need your fortune told. Come on. Tell me everything." She motioned me to follow her.

I took a doubtful step, then froze in place as I sighted two of the village elders walking by, deep in conversation.

"All right, child. It's clear you're concerned about being seen with me. They're gossiping about something, but it's not you. No one's paying attention. So get inside." She tossed her luscious curtain of deep auburn hair and held the tent flap open for me.

I followed her inside. "You can stop calling me child. I'm almost twenty."

"Aren't we all." She let the canvas door fall closed and smiled widely at me, flicking her crimson robes ostentatiously as she sank into a cross-legged position on a cushioned bench. "Sit, sit."

I perched gingerly on the edge of the seat across from her.

"So what brings you here?" She eyed me appraisingly.

"What?" I traced her gaze to… my midsection. "Gods, no! Not that!"

"You'll have to forgive me for jumping to conclusions. Most highborn girls only come see us when they're already in a bit of trouble."

"What makes you say I'm highborn?" I shifted uneasily.

"My dear, you're dressed as a village girl, but you don't carry yourself like one. Not to mention, I've never seen a village girl act as worried as you were to be caught discussing matters governed by the goddess. You're a country lord's daughter, or I'm a virgin." Her eyes twinkled merrily. "I'm not a virgin," she stage-whispered.

I felt my cheeks redden again. What a fool I was. Someone would see me, and they'd tell a friend—eventually it would get back to one of our servants, and someone would let something slip, and next thing I knew my mother would find a way to question me about it over dinner.

"I should go—" I stood to flee like the coward I was, but she stopped me with a gentle touch on my arm. Her nails were beautiful, lacquered works of art. I'd never seen anything like them. I dropped back to my seat. Her delicate hands flitted animatedly while she continued.

"If you're here for a love potion, I have that, but its limitations may disappoint you." She looked me over. "Hmm. You already have a boy in mind, or else you wouldn't be here. Or… a girl?" She studied me again. "No, a boy."

I crossed my arms again, hugging them to myself.

"But you're not here for a philter, are you?" She considered me thoughtfully, tapping her chin with one finger. "You come from minor nobility and you're of age, so your parents will arrange a marriage for you soon." She cocked her head to one side, contemplating. "It's your chance to play, _but_ you can't afford to get pregnant. So, you're looking for herbal prophylactics. And you also can't risk anyone knowing you're messing about with this boy, hence your nervousness and that nonsense about fortune telling." She smiled, pleased with her own cleverness.

"No one's arranging a marriage," I grumbled, feeling otherwise oddly exposed by her accuracy.

She raised both her eyebrows in knowing amusement. "Give it time. How much did I get right?"

"Most of it." I didn't like how easily she'd guessed everything. "Can we just…" I began.

"Of course. Sorry about the extemporizing. I get bored." She stood and removed the cushion from her bench, which had storage inside, and took out a metal tin. From the same place she shook out a clean square of undyed cloth, onto which she placed two small heaps of dark brown shavings from the tin.

My leg began fidgeting with nerves, so I stood to watch.

"This is nararoot. If you make this much into a tea," she went on pleasantly, "it will make you unable to conceive, for about a tenday, occasionally longer. And it tastes terrible, but if you chew the shavings instead, you'll have more time."

I looked at her in dismay. Only ten days? "I think I need more than that."

She grinned to herself, but didn't glance up. "How's this?" She added a few, slightly more generous, scoops to the cloth and looked at me expectantly.

My scalp prickled as the embarrassed flush crept into my hairline. "Ah, well, um. How much for all of it?"

Her mouth dropped open, just a little. "All right. It seems I have you all wrong. Are you opening a brothel, or what? Just how much sex are you planning to have?"

"Please be quiet," I begged. "Someone might hear. I—it has to last me all summer. Longer, if possible. I won't be able to get more until the harvest fair."

"There's an herb shop not fifty feet behind us," she pointed out.

"You think I don't know that? I can't buy this in my own village! My mother will find out."

"This is _your_ village? As skittish as you are, I figured you were from three counties over!"

I plopped back down on the bench and buried my face in my hands. "I'm an idiot. This is so stupid."

"No. It's not. Of course it's not. You did the right thing coming here." She pushed her skirts out of the way and took a seat across from me. "Listen. I'm sorry I made fun."

"Don't be, I deserved that for wasting your time." I took out my purse and fumbled for enough silver to pay her. "How much?"

She reached beneath the table and came back up with a bulging wineskin. "No. Stay. I promise you'll be glad you did." She sounded interested in me now that I had revealed myself as a madwoman of below average intellect. "And I confess… I'm _much_ more curious about the girl whose summer calendar of romantic assignations is so crowded that she has to buy up my whole stock"—she twisted the cork from the wineskin with a soft _pop_ —"than I was about the lord's daughter hoping for a quick tumble during the spring festival."

She produced two wine cups from somewhere, filled both, and shoved one in my direction. "Drink that and we'll talk." She took a deep draught from her own cup, then refilled it.

I took the cup and held it delicately in both hands before chancing a sip. It was fruity, which I liked, but not too sweet, and light on my tongue. I sipped it again before answering. "I want to be… prepared."

"For the next three years? Sorry—only teasing! Don't make that face. You know, of all the virgins I've met—you may be the virgin-est of them all."

"Right. Good. Thanks for that."

"Gods, girl, your face is redder right now than Sune's hair. You need to lighten up or you won't have any fun at all with your young man. Now, tell me all about him."

"Er—"

"Oh, he's not _old_ , is he? Well, that's not so terrible, I mean. There's something adventuresome in being deflowered by an experienced lover. Oh! Or is it _men_ , plural? Scandalous!" Her laughter was a high, joyful tinkle.

I coughed and nearly strangled on my wine. " _One._ And he's not old. He's my age." Britt would find the story of this encounter uproariously funny, if I ever told him about it. He would tease me mercilessly, and I would feign outrage, and then I'd… what? Show him my two pound bag of nararoot and invite him to ravish me? Ugh.

Maybe I'd rather just never see him again.

"Well, now you _have_ to tell me. Otherwise, what if I seduced him by mistake?" Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

"Oh my Gods," I sighed.

"Finish your wine. That's an order."

Today was a disaster anyway. I raised the wooden cup in a mock toast and drained it, an unladylike gesture that would have made my mother throw up her hands in despair.

But my mother wasn't here. That was sort of the point.

She refilled my cup and slid it back over before regarding me in curious silence.

"Fine. He's a blacksmith."

"Oh! Tall, like you? Most luscious head of hair this side of the Sword Coast? Twinkling brown eyes, lashes most any woman would happily kill for?"

I cleared my throat.

"Muscles like iron bands? Carries a hammer… and knows how to use it? Fills out his trousers like he was born—"

"—all right! Fine, he's very… good looking, yes."

"And today's the day?"

"… if he's amenable."

She laughed. "They're always amenable. How long have you been waiting?"

The wine flooded my head. I hadn't eaten yet, it occurred to me. "Er. I think, the winter solstice or so."

She giggled. "You don't drink much, do you? The look on your face just now."

I considered her words. "I don't _not_ drink."

"Feeling better, though?"

I was, I realized. "In fact… yes."

"I thought so. Your hands aren't curled into fists anymore."

I looked down in surprise.

"Winter solstice, though! Gods, you _do_ have restraint. At your age I would have gotten myself into heaps of exciting trouble with a boy like that." Something must have shown in my face, because her expression changed. "Oh… it's not just play for you, is it? You _love_ him. That explains a lot."

My shoulders had begun a slow creep up toward my ears. "… maybe I do. I don't know yet." I paused. "Explains what?"

"No matter. I'm going to give you some advice."

I finished my wine and managed a quick smile. "That's good. As it turns out, I'm in desperate need of advice."

"Perfect!" She pressed her hands together with a satisfied expression. "You're my favorite kind of client."

"Ha. The pathetic kind?"

"The brave kind! You came here, didn't you?"

I spotted a small knothole on her tabletop. It looked like an owl. I rubbed my finger over the place its beak should be. "What if I'm making a mistake?"

"Oh, you well-bred families and your notions of propriety." She waved one hand dismissively and rose, removing the lid to her storage bench and withdrawing an assortment of small pouches. "Hand me that."

I looked where she pointed and saw a small iron kettle. When I picked it up, water sloshed inside. She set it on a small brazier and concentrated, muttering something under her breath. A flame kindled, flickering delicately until she leaned in and breathed on it, coaxing it to life.

"This won't take long. It's a simple brew." She opened a pouch and sifted a fine powder into the kettle.

"What's that?"

"The first time hurts. This will lessen that."

"Oh."

"See, you're getting good at this! You barely blushed just now."

"That's the wine."

"No matter." She shook the kettle and added some bark shavings. "These will keep you from getting with child."

"What was the advice?"

"The first part is simple. Do what feels good. And skip anything that doesn't. Your body will guide you. Listen to it."

That didn't sound so bad. "What's the rest?"

"Try to make water before and after. It'll prevent the newlywed's affliction."

That _did_ sound bad. "What's that?"

"Some people call it fire bladder."

That sounded even worse. I stared at her in horror.

"Don't worry, child. Keep yourself clean and you'll be fine." She took the kettle off the brazier and took out an earthen tea mug from somewhere, neatly decanting the steaming liquid into it.

"I'll let you in on a few secrets while that cools."


	2. Who, Being Loved, Is Poor?

The shop bell tinkled as I pushed open the door to the smithy, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the low light. Britt was standing, back to me, at the small anvil he and his father used for delicate work like cutlery and other household items. He had a light hammer in one hand, fiddling it absently as he considered whatever it was he was working. "Just a minute," he called without turning around. "Be right with you. Look around, if you like."

I watched him lean over, studying something on the anvil, and exchange the hammer he was holding for a tiny ball peen. Whatever he was making was delicate, if that was the tool he needed. Curious, I took a step toward him. "What are you w—"

He startled violently at my voice, dropping the hammer on the table with a clatter before half turning. "Gods, Oswin, don't sneak up on me like that! What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn't see you till later."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you. I was just excited to see you. I went… what are you working on that had you so distracted?"

"Nothing. Something for Cora. She needed new hinges for one of the oven doors."

"You're using the little hammer for _that_?" I asked, craning to see.

"Oh—uh…" Britt skimmed one hand along the anvil, as if dusting it off, and casually slipped both hands into his pockets. "Sorry… you were saying? You went somewhere?" He had an odd, sort of wincing, look on his face. It was made all the stranger because he was trying, not very successfully, to appear normal.

"Britt, did you… did you just burn your hand?"

"…no?"

It seemed there must be more, but instead of explaining he dragged his forearm over his face, wiping away sweat and leaving behind a black coal smudge. I decided to let it go. "You have some soot—" I took out a clean handkerchief and reached for him—

"—oh, Os, don't… you'll get your clothes all—wait, what is this you're _wearing_?"

His expression was so funny that I changed my mind about wiping soot from his face and seized his shirt collar instead, drawing him in close for a kiss. He hesitated momentarily, then hooked his hand around my waist and leaned in, pulling me to him. I sighed happily, playing my tongue along his lower lip.

"Just how much wine have you had this morning?" he inquired politely after we broke the kiss.

I leaned my forehead against his chest and giggled. "None."

Britt slipped his other arm around my back and swayed me back and forth, wrapped in his hug. "Did you just honest-to-gods _giggle_? You?" He gave me a friendly squeeze. "Who is this lying little vixen?" he asked the top of my head.

"Lying! You should talk!" I laughed, twisting in his arms and catching his hand. "Let me look at that!"

"Oww— _Os_ win!" He pulled it away.

"I'm sorry! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, you just caught me right on the spot where I… didn't burn myself." He grinned.

"But why did you—"

"—no more questions, all right?" He dragged his sooty thumb down my nose, making me squeak indignantly. "I'm making a present for you. Don't you dare spoil it any further."

I opened my eyes wide. "All right. I'll be good. I promise."

"You said earlier you went somewhere?"

"Oh…" I felt the tips of my ears turn warm. "… yes."

He looked at me questioningly.

"I had an errand and I'll tell you about it in a minute but I'm feeling shy right now so talk to me about something else first."

"Sounds important." He folded his arms around me again. "Do you know that when you blush, even the tip of your nose turns pink? I can tell, even under the soot."

I made a face.

"You said talk about something else!" he protested, smiling wickedly. "But I admit, I'm curious what your errand was. Drunk before highsun, clad in… whatever this intriguing costume is, and too timid to tell me about any of it? _Very_ mysterious."

"I—"

"—you know there's nothing you can't talk to me about, don't you?"

I ducked my head and rested it on his chest. "I know."

"Just making sure." He kissed the top of my head, rubbing his hand on my back. "I hope you didn't have plans for these clothes, because they're all sooty now."

I spoke without looking up at him, lest my courage fail. "I was hoping you might want to tear them off me."

His hand stilled on my back. "Oh?" His tone sounded carefully controlled.

"I went to the Sunite festival stall today. For the things I needed." I took a breath. "To prevent, um, conception."

I felt him look down at me while he considered my words. "That's strange. I always have to send off to Waterdeep when I need stork poison. You're telling me all this time I should have asked the love goddess—"

I gave him a little shove. "Don't be an ass."

"Sorry. I needed to buy time to think."

"About what?"

"How long will it take to extinguish the forge, how fast can I get myself cleaned up, will I lose too much festival business if I close early, how long until Dad comes back, is it wrong to say yes to this when you're a little drunk—"

"—I'm sorry I upset your plans for today. I can come back later, like we agreed before. I don't mind. Truly." I smiled.

"I didn't say I minded. Besides"—he dragged his thumb down the curve of my jaw, and then the column of my neck, tracing a faint trail of soot gently down my décolletage and into the curve of my cleavage—"if you leave now, anyone who sees you will know _exactly_ everywhere my hands have been."

His touch left me a little dazed. Instead of answering, I reached for him, slipping my fingers into his thick, glossy brown curls and touching my lips to his. Britt made a low sound deep in his throat and spun me round, pressing my back against the work bench and forcing our bodies close before coaxing my lips apart with his tongue. We explored each other a little while, not nearly long enough, before Britt broke off the kiss and set his hands on my shoulders. "I need to close the shop before someone comes in and sees us," he said a bit breathlessly.

My heart pounded as he turned the sign in the shop window and bolted the door.

"I've been waiting for this _so_ long," I said, a little bashfully. "But I couldn't get the herbs I needed."

"Same." Britt took the coal rake and began dragging coke away from the firepot, spreading out the flames to starve them of fuel.

"Men have secret herbs, too?" I beamed.

Britt grabbed a cloth from a hook on the wall and mopped the sweat from his face. "Os, that's not fair. _I'm_ supposed to be the funny one." He gave me a lopsided little grin.

"You're the funny one? What am I, then?"

"You're the smart one. I thought that was obvious. It's part of why we make such a fine pair."

"Oh. Well, thank you." I hopped up on the edge of his work bench and sat there, legs swinging, watching as Britt gave the firepot another stir with the rake, then returned to the bench, picking up tongs, hammers, and other implements and hanging them on their hooks. I picked up the small hammer he dropped when I came in, and looked at it, turning it over in my hands. I wanted to ask if it was for jewelry smithing, but had a feeling I already knew the answer. I set the hammer back on the little anvil.

Britt went back to the fire, which had subsided to a few flickers amongst the glowing coals, and gave it another onceover with the rake. "You're awfully quiet," he observed.

I shrugged. "I like seeing you work. Can I help with anything?"

"You don't have to."

"I know."

He gave me a little smile. "There's a broom against the far wall, behind the shop counter. If you'll wait until I've shoveled the coals, you can sweep the floor around the forge for me."

I hopped down and crossed the shop, reaching for the broom handle just as Britt's father came in from the door adjoining the cottage where they lived. I sank behind the counter, hoping he hadn't seen. Britt's father was _not_ fond of me. If he'd walked in fifteen minutes earlier… my cheeks burned at the thought of what he would say at the sight of my sooty face and dress as it was, let alone our scandalous embrace.

"You closing up?" he asked Britt.

"Yep, morning was slow enough, I thought I'd knock off for the day."

"Mm." His father made a noise of agreement. "Tomorrow'll be busier, I expect."

"What're you doing today?" Britt asked.

"Well, I came to see whether you cared if I wasn't back until tomorrow. Cooper's starting a dice game down at the inn and I thought I might buy in. May as well stay there tonight."

I slapped a hand over my mouth lest a squeal of sheer joy escape me. I wasn't expected back until dinner. We'd have a whole afternoon to ourselves!

"Fine with me," Britt said. "I can build up the fire and open shop in the morning. Just don't let Granger make you drink yourself half to death like last time. If you have to crawl all the way home you won't be any use to me." I could hear the grin in his voice.

"Quiet, you. Let your old man have his fun." His father's tone was gruffly affectionate. "Need any help finishing up?"

"Nah, I'm near done here anyhow. Have fun. Don't lose your shirt."

I saw his father give him a dismissive wave. "See you tomorrow."

I waited after the door closed, until Britt called, "All right, you can stop hiding now."

He laughed at how quickly I popped up from my place behind the counter and snatched the broom. I couldn't keep the smile from my face as I watched Britt shovel the mostly burnt out coals into a bucket of water to ensure they were fully extinguished and to clean them of ash and clinker.

"Well, seems you were right after all, Os," he remarked as he stood aside to let me begin the sweeping up. "And here I thought you'd scuttled everything by turning up early and unexpected. That'll teach me to doubt you."

"I can't believe we have all afternoon!" I bubbled, helpless to contain my excitement.

"Me neither. Honestly, I wasn't sure how to solve the problem of my dad. Maybe you made an impression on Sune today." He grinned again and hopped up on the bench, watching as I flicked the broom around the forge, happily sweeping up bits of slag and coal dust. "Come on, siren," he said finally. "How about you let me finish that up tomorrow? Fire's out. We don't have to waste our precious time on the sweeping." He held his hand out.

"It's not out."

He made a face at the joke, so I leaned the broom against the bench and slipped my hand into his. "I'm so happy right now," I whispered, my heart skittering.

"I am too." With his other hand, he gave me a squeeze on the waist, then skimmed up my body and cupped my breast through my dress, tweaking my nipple gently between his thumb and forefinger.

"Britt!" My face reddened at the warm throb of excitement in my stomach.

"What?" he asked innocently.

"Anybody could see us!"

"Ah, well. I guess we'd better find ourselves some privacy, hmm?" Britt slid down from the bench and reached for me.

"What are you—" I shrieked as he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing. "Britt—" I protested as he carried me to the door, but I was laughing too hard to fight him in earnest. I settled for playacting my outrage with a suitable amount of thrashing.

"You're an awful captive," Britt complained, laughing, as I pounded his back with my fists. "Tell me now, what shall I do with you?" He threw his arm around my legs, pinning them in place. "Stop that, or you'll brain yourself on the door jamb."

I giggled. "Put me down."

Britt pretended to think about it, then set me neatly on my feet. "You're sure about this?" he asked, abruptly serious. "Because I won't be mad if you change your mind. At any point." He reached over and returned an escaped lock of my hair to its braid, tucking it gently back into place. "Now, or ever," he added.

"No, I'm sure. I've been sure a while now."

"Me too." He paused, hand on the door. "Os."

"What?" I smiled up at him.

"You look just like a chimney sweep right now—oww! What was that for—"

"—you are terrible, do you know that! I don't know why I spend my time on you!" I laughed.

"I could have said street urchin. But I didn't. Because I think so more highly of you than that."

I rolled my eyes. "You're impossible."

—∞—∞—∞—

[tender interactions which despite their exquisite sweetness truly don't belong in a story rated T]

—∞—∞—∞—

I drifted awake, warm, comfortable, and happy, nestled stark naked in the crook of Britt's arm. Blinking drowsily, I took in the pleasant scene. I loved his room. The bed and bed stand dominated most of the small space, but his east-facing window had bathed the room in golden light that morning, and the long shadows of evening that now crept along the walls were equally beautiful to me now.

I jerked fully awake as it dawned on me that I should have been home dressing for dinner with my mother and sister. Well over an hour ago, by the look of it.

"Oh, no." I looked around for my discarded dress. "Oh, no. No, no, no…" My throat was tight as I tried to decide what excuse my mother would possibly accept for my lateness. And if I turned up looking a complete mess… I touched my hair, tangled and half falling out of its braid, with utter dismay. Even if I cleaned myself up fast enough… somehow she would _know_.

Next to me, Britt startled awake. "Os?"

"I'm sorry, I'm late—I have to go," I rushed to explain. "Help me find my smallclothes!"

He set his hand on my arm. "Os, no, it's all right. I—"

"She'll be furious. And I have no excuse." I felt panicked tears spring to my eyes before I could blink them away.

"Os. She won't. She—"

Why wasn't he helping me? "You don't understand the kind of trouble I'm in. Last time she wouldn't let me leave the house for a month." I spotted my underdrawers and reached for them. "And Father's gone to Sesswick, so he can't make her behave. Oh, gods, I'm so stupid! How could I fall asleep like that?"

Britt closed his hand around mine, surprising me with his sudden forcefulness. _"Oswin_. _Listen._ I stepped out earlier, while you were asleep."

I wiped a tear away. "What's that got to do with my mother?"

"Well… I was looking out the window, thinking how much I wanted to spend the night with you. Then I saw Bonnie going by. It gave me an idea. So, I got dressed and went to talk to her."

Bonnie was my family's housemaid. I looked at him, confused. "About _what_?"

"Your cook made an order for a set of new spoons the tenday before last. I told Bonnie she could keep the silver meant to pay for them, if she'd do me a favor."

"What kind of favor?"

The question seemed to worry him. "Well…"

I frowned. "Britt… what did you _do_?"

"I… asked Bonnie to add a sleeping draught to your mother's wine this afternoon. It won't hurt her, but she'll sleep through till tomorrow. She'll just think she drank too much."

I blinked. "I—you—what? You _drugged_ my mother? I can't _believe_ —" I shook my head incredulously, then looked at his anxious face, eyes dark with concern, and realized belatedly I must sound angry. "—I can't believe I never thought of that myself," I finished.

"I'm not angry," I clarified after taking in his confused look. "What a truly brilliant idea. No one would even question that. Including her. She drinks herself to sleep all the time."

He sighed with relief. "Not five seconds ago I thought you were about to storm out of here and I'd never see you again. That's assuming you didn't kill me before you left."

I exhaled slowly and turned, relaxing back against him. "No, I was just surprised. How did you explain it to Bonnie, though?"

"Oh. Well, she and Jessa would have worried if you didn't come home. I told her you were spending the night with me."

I sat bolt upright again in shock. " _Britt_! Why would you tell her about us? What if she lets something slip in front of my mother?"

"She won't."

I opened my mouth to object, but he hastened to finish.

"She said she was glad, and that your mother is a tyrant, and you deserved to have something nice in your life that she can't touch."

"Bonnie has a lot of opinions," I grumbled.

"I also asked her to spend time with Jessy tonight so she wouldn't be lonely without you."

"Oh." That was thoughtful.

"I sent her with some of the lemon tarts from Cora's, and some spring flowers for those"—he made a vague circular motion around his head—"crowns that girls like to make."

"Wreaths."

He snapped his fingers. "Yes. Bonnie is making wreaths with her."

"It sounds like you thought of everything." Britt held his arms open at that, and I climbed into his lap. "Sometimes I don't know what I did to deserve someone so nice as you." I leaned my head on his chest.

"Oh? Well, sometimes I don't know what I did to deserve someone as clever and interesting as you." He stroked my hair, tucking little bits of it back into my ruined braid.

"I don't even know why you're trying. I'm a mess."

"Maybe a little," he conceded. "I am too, though." I reached up and fluffed my hand through his thick, dark hair, making it stand up in all directions.

Britt wrinkled his nose at me. "Thanks."

I laughed and combed it down again with my fingers, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. "Why'd you let me sleep so long? Wasn't it boring?"

"I slept too, a little. And when I woke up… I liked watching you sleep."

"You _liked watching me_?" I made a face. "I hope you don't think that sounds romantic. You're not impressing any woman with that sentiment."

Britt tweaked the tip of my nose. "I guess it's lucky I'm not interested in impressing any woman, then."

"Me most of all, I see." I couldn't read his expression, but it had grown serious. "What? You tease me all the time, don't tell me you can't take a little ribbing."

"No, it's not that. I have something important and I keep… not talking to you about it."

"You what?" I twisted in his lap and looked up at him. "What is it?"

"Do you remember that day you came to the shop to ask after the brooch your mother sent for repair? It was about a year ago."

I nodded. "What about it?"

"The brooch wasn't ready, but you smiled and said now you had an excuse to visit the bakery again sooner. You'd just bought some lemon tarts, and you were shocked when I said I never tried them."

"Cora's just next door! And the lemon is my favorite."

Britt took my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. "You made me share a tart with you because you couldn't stand anyone not knowing how good they were."

I laughed at the memory. "And you didn't like them. You like cherry. But I had to drag it out of you because you didn't want to hurt my feelings."

Britt tightened his grip on my hand. "You weren't offended. You just shrugged and finished the rest yourself. And then, after I thought you went home, you came back with a cherry tart for me."

"Yes, because what a sad thing, to be tartless."

"Oh, indeed." He played with my messy braid. "You bossed me into trying your favorite sweets, but when you figured out it wasn't my favorite too, you brought me something I _would_ like. I think I fell in love with you that day."

I couldn't seem to get my breath.

"I tried hard to forget it. I knew it was a silly exchange, it meant nothing. But then a few months after, I saw you at last year's harvest—you remember. You had two cups of wine and you were dancing with your little sister. And then you saw me and made me come over and dance with you. You held my hand. And the way you smiled at me… you gave me that playful goodnight kiss and it was so… friendly and sweet. I know it sounds dumb. But I couldn't stop thinking about you and your chaste little kiss on my cheek."

Britt's words had the sound of being carefully chosen, as if it were very important for them to be exactly right.

"I told myself, it was the wine, and the dance. It didn't mean anything. But a few days later, you came into the shop and picked out some shoe buckles. I thought about those buckles a lot, because I couldn't figure what you could possibly want with them, and sure enough, Old Jasper told me later you gave him a pair of buckles. You came back, so many times, and you bought thimbles, and spoons, and plates. Most of it you never kept."

I squeezed his hand.

"Finally I ran out of things to sell you that you didn't need. And I guess that's when I started to let myself accept that maybe you really were there to see me."

I felt a happy tear trail down my cheek. "I was."

Britt wiped the tear away with his thumb. My eyes brimmed over again. "I know," he said. "You spent a _lot_ of money last winter on really dumb bullshit."

I snorted through my tears. "I did, didn't I?"

Britt smiled so widely it looked like his face might crack. " _Really_ dumb. Let's be clear on that point."

I made a face. "Don't get carried away."

"A few times I made ridiculous things on purpose, just to see if you would buy them because they were something you hadn't seen in the shop yet."

"Liar." I shoved him.

"I did! I made a game of it. What Will Lady Oswin Buy Next?"

"What, then?"

"A salt cellar shaped like an owlbear."

I sputtered with laughter. " _That_ thing? Well, all right… that was pretty stupid, I'll admit. I remember wondering who would want such an ugly thing."

" _You_. You were the _only_ one."

"What else?" I asked, enjoying our game.

He thought for a second. "A brass onion brooch."

"The onion wasn't stupid! I kept that one."

"Why? Because you couldn't get anyone to take it away for free?"

"No! I liked it. It was odd, maybe, but it had a sort of simple prettiness to it. The stalks were so detailed."

"Are you _sure_ you're not still drunk?"

"All right, this isn't fun anymore!" I protested. "What happened to that sweet conversation we were having? The one where you said you fell in love with me?"

"Oh. Right." He stroked my back. "After all that talk of salt cellars and onions my original point now feels awkward."

"Then… _I'll_ talk until you don't feel like that anymore." I touched Britt's face softly, dragging my fingernails against the grain of his whiskers. "The night of the harvest festival dance. I remember every detail. I hardly slept that night, for thinking of you. This hair…" I smiled and stroked my hands through it. "I thought you were _so_ handsome."

"I _am_ so handsome."

"Shut up. I'm talking now." I leaned up and kissed him softly, then settled back in his arms. "It was three months of really dumb bullshit before I worked up the nerve to kiss you. Not like how I kissed you at harvest. A _real_ kiss. I kept thinking you would make the first move, and you didn't."

"Well, you bought that dreadful owlbear. I couldn't tell whether you were deranged, or just addle-brained."

"If I was either, then it's your fault for how much you made me wonder whether you actually liked me, or if it was all in my imagination."

"We had a _good_ first kiss, though, didn't we? Worth the wait if you ask me."

I closed my eyes and smiled at the memory. "It was so good I've been waiting for today ever since."

"I'm ready to tell you now."

"Oh?"

Britt reached over and fumbled with the drawer to his bed stand, removing something small enough to hide in his hand.

I bit my lower lip, sucking in my breath.

"Ready to hear my speech?"

I nodded.

"Oswin. I love you." He paused. "I just realized… that's it. I was going to tell you all the reasons why, but then you'd be late for tomorrow night's dinner too, and I don't have a clever scheme for that one. But… you're it for me. And if you feel the same—"

"—I _do_ feel the same. But how will we convince my parents?" Mother would rather send me to the nine hells than let me marry a blacksmith's son.

"I don't know yet. We'll figure it out together. We don't have to decide everything right now." He didn't know how hard it would be to convince them, not really, but his words made me feel better anyway.

He gave me a squeeze. "I made this for you. Whether or not you say yes. I want you to always know how loved you are. You deserve gold, but… this is what I could manage now." He slid a small silver ring onto my finger.

I splayed my fingers and looked down at it, struck mute by its simple beauty. It made my hand look…pretty. "I don't want gold. This is perfect. The clasped hands are… me and you?" The craftsmanship was lovely.

He pointed. "Yes, but look. Clasped over our shared heart."

Now I was crying for real. He seemed to understand, though, and kept quiet, holding me to him. "Britt," I mumbled. "I love you too."

"I know, Mouse." He wiped a tear from my cheek.

I shifted in his arms. "Mouse?"

"Just trying out a new nickname."

"Why that? I was so sure you didn't catch me that time I crept out of a hole in the wall and stole the crumbs from your kitchen."

"You squeaked so much earlier I don't know what else I'm supposed to call you— _ow_! You didn't have to _hit_ me!"

Everything felt very simple, then.

All the gods and devils in creation could damn me at once before I would let my parents keep me from this man. "Yes."

I loved it that he didn't bother concealing his delight or trying to preserve his masculine dignity. "You mean, _yes_ yes?"

"I mean, yes to everything. To your excellent kisses and your kindness, and your generosity and cleverness… and your stupid owlbears and your awful teasing and incessant nicknames." We both laughed.

I wiped my eyes. "I just remembered something! Is this ring what you were making this morning?"

He nodded. "I went back down and finished it while you were sleeping."

"Really? You did that?" I grabbed his hand and turned it over. Sure enough, the burn was a small circle—the shape and size of my ring. "Oh, Britt… I love it. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." I kissed his burned hand. "Although… don't be upset with me," I said, carefully adjusting my beautiful ring. "You know I can't wear this in front of anyone. At least, not yet."

"I thought of that!"

I'd scarcely seen him look so pleased with himself. That, in itself, was arresting. I looked at him, confused.

"I bought a spell for it," he explained proudly. "I had the silver enchanted."

"Enchanted to do what?"

He cleared his throat. "Love endures," he said solemnly, as if the words were very important.

"What—oh!" The ring had blinked out of existence. Yet, I felt it still on my finger. "What is this?" I asked in amazement.

"It's always there, but never seen unless you will it."

"Those were… magic words?" I looked at my hand in awe.

"You try."

Feeling a little self-conscious, I said the words myself. My beautiful ring became visible again.

I couldn't suppress the silly smile that rose to my lips. "Are you the one who decided on 'love endures?' That is the sappiest, loveliest thing I've ever heard."

"It had to be something nobody would say in passing. Think what a useless charm it would be if I picked 'good morning', or 'pass the salt.'"

I laughed. "If you really wanted my mother to find out you'd have gone with 'stop slouching.'"

"She's not wrong. Slouching hides the fact that you're as nice outside as you are inside."

"Be quiet," I whispered. "You're going to make me cry again."

"Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere."

Britt gave me another squeeze and I leaned my head into him. "I love you."

"I love you too." He paused. "Is this an all right time to point out how very, very naked we both still are?"


	3. The Only Truth That Sticks

[TEN MONTHS LATER]

As soon as Bonnie served the main course and closed the door to the dining room behind her, our mother smiled conspiratorially. She adopted a grand tone and leaned toward me as if she and I shared a charming secret. "Oswin. I could hardly conceal my excitement today. Your father and I have some important news for you."

Father looked up, frowning slightly, but she smiled disarmingly at him.

Her purring tone signified danger. She was pleased with herself about something, and she'd already had two glasses of wine before dinner, with a third in her hand right now. I recalled now how friendly she'd been in the drawing room before dinner, doling out several unexpected compliments on my appearance as Jessa and I sipped drinks with her and waited for Father. I'd thought she was simply in one of her self-congratulatory doting mother moods, and being a little drunk had slipped her further into the role than usual.

I looked at my father, but his expression had returned to his characteristically assiduous neutrality. Jessa nervously set down the fork she'd picked up.

Sitting up a bit straighter, I tried to strike a balance between the delighted interest I was expected to project and the inordinate unease I suddenly felt. "What's that?"

Mother pursed her lips at me. It wasn't ladylike to be so informal and abrupt.

"I'm sorry, Mother. Will you please tell us your news?"

Mother inclined her head in theatrical magnanimity, her golden hair gleaming in the firelight. She was a born beauty, like Jessa, and she knew how to use it to her advantage. I took after our father, in stature, in temperament, and in coloring, to her anguish. To have a borne a pallid-complected daughter with dark hair was one of her greatest and most enduring despairs.

"It's _your_ news, dear."

With a sinking feeling I realized we had begun one of Mother's grand performances, or as Jessa and I privately termed them, Mummy's bard shows. It was of critical importance that all momentous occasions or conversations be conducted with the kind of scintillating grandiosity that she considered routine in households more esteemed than ours. Her bard shows, when they occurred, were tightly scripted, and only she knew all the lines. Our responsibility was to fumble through the roles of dutiful, admiring daughters best we could.

Father was generally unmoved by her ceremonious efforts, and was permitted this indifference, either because she had so thoroughly given up on his potential as a partner in playacting, or perhaps because she had learned early in their arrangement that her punishments had little impact on him.

I considered the myriad unpleasant things her announcement might mean. Perhaps we were going for a visit to her parents at their duchy near Waterdeep. That happened every few years. The long trip would be unpleasant, and my compulsory attendance at balls and other elegant functions would be tedious. I'd have to go months without seeing Britt.

Maybe she was launching another of her campaigns meant to mitigate my many failures in the sphere of Being a Lady. Father didn't much care about me Being a Lady, as Being Dutiful and Having Responsibility to Land and People were his directives. But I was still expected to satisfy her demands, which meant occasionally submitting to tailoring and measuring and furious sewing and critiquing on my appearance until the wardrobe that would ultimately fail to blossom me into a whole new girl was complete.

That wouldn't be any fun, but least I wouldn't have to endure the long separation required by a visit to see my grandparents, or a weeks long coach ride with Mother.

"Oswin."

"I'm sorry, Mother," I said. "I was distracted. Please go on."

"You're always so distracted, dear," Mother said in a voice meant to sound fond. "Do try to pay attention."

My stomach tightened with apprehension, but I rearranged my face into the contrite, but good-natured, smile appropriate to the receipt of these instructions.

Jessa came to my rescue, summoning an expression of enchanted interest and imploring her, "Mother, don't tease!" She was much better at this.

Mother's beatific smile shone on us like the sun. "Oh, very well," she consented. "Your sister is to be married!"

My whole body turned cold as I looked at her in stunned silence.

 _I_ wasn't one of those girls whose parents fixed up marriages without telling them. Father had been teaching me his role as protector and administrator to our village, lands and people since I was a small girl. I wasn't a beauty like Mother and Jessa, but I knew how to keep accounts and settle disputes fairly.

The year I turned sixteen, I'd accidentally overheard Father telling Lord Kerwin, who also had only daughters, that I was as sharp-witted and as natural a fit to the role of governance as any son. Lord Kerwin lamented, with apparent envy, that his girls cared only for dresses and trinkets. Oh, to have a capable daughter like Oswin, deserving of inheritance.

It wasn't Father's way to give such praise to me directly, but since learning his plans for me I had held my head high with the ferocity of my loyalty and pride. It wasn't unheard of for daughters to be made heir, but it wasn't the usual custom, either. It meant I had uncommon worth.

And people of uncommon worth didn't get ambushed by arranged marriages.

"Isn't that splendid? Oswin. Darling. Your wedding will be an absolute vision, I know. I've already sent to Waterdeep for material samples."

"Samples?" I repeated blankly.

"For your _gown_ , dear," Mother said with exaggerated patience. "And your trousseau. We can't do anything about your height, of course, but we'll put you in low heels and you'll make a lovely bride when we're through with you. You'll be a fine earl's wife."

"Earl's wife."

The corners of her mouth crinkled with suppressed irritation. "Indeed. I've made you a fine match. Really, Oswin, I understand it's unexpected, but you might show a little gratitude."

" _Gratitude_." I sensed things wouldn't go well if I couldn't stop stupidly parroting the last thing she said, but I'd lost my bearings.

"Yes, gratitude," Mother said impatiently. "If it had been left up to your father I'm sure he would have found an excellent country squire or shopkeeper for you to marry." She smiled with wry humor, entirely ignorant of the fact that I had already found myself an excellent blacksmith to marry.

I swallowed hard and looked at my father. "You knew about this plan?"

Father, the only one of us who seemed to have any appetite, finished chewing before he answered. "These things are your mother's domain."

"And you said nothing to me."

Jessa was slowly sinking lower and lower in her chair, physically withdrawing as much as she could from the table. I envied her.

"Do you understand _now_ , Oswell, what I'm working with? What I tried to tell you? This is the thanks I get for making our daughter—against all odds, mind you—a future countess."

Another of Mother's most enduring despairs, as the daughter of a financially troubled duke, was having been married to our father, a country baron of no particular importance and with little interest in finery, pageantry, or exploitation of his title for personal gratification. Her plodding life as a country baroness, far from city balls and the petty intrigues of nobility, was a source of unending disenchantment, and so was Father, with his unextravagant, utilitarian approach to all things.

My father sighed. "You've also had longer to get used to the idea. Give her time."

"Time? How long have you been arranging this?" I asked, feeling strangely detached. This kind of unfortunate thing happened to other girls. Not to me.

Mother laughed sharply. "You make it sound as if I were scheming against you! Really, now. You have no sense of romance. Most girls would be thrilled, Oswin. _Thrilled_." She threw a beleaguered look at Father and drained her wineglass, somehow managing to do it in a thoroughly elegant way.

"I told you not to… thrust it on her like this. Oswin isn't you. She doesn't care for surprises." He speared a piece of capon on his fork and took a bite, as if this were a perfectly ordinary dinner instead of a proposal to end my life as I knew it. "She's a sensible girl. She'll come round."

 _Come round_?

"If she had any real sense she would have shown it by now." Mother shook her head and reached for the decanter. "Every other girl wants to be a bride. Every other girl dreams of her wedding day. I get the one daughter in the realms who doesn't."

"I don't like surprises, either," he added pointedly. I wondered if that meant he hadn't known tonight was the big reveal.

"You haven't even _asked_ who your husband will be," she said to me, pouring herself a generous glass.

"Because it's completely irrelevant. I'm not marrying some stranger." My voice was as flat and dull as I felt. Why wasn't Father speaking up for me?

"You are a piece of work, do you know that? I have given you so many opportunities to grow, to become a woman of quality, to make your family proud. And I get this willfulness instead—"

Father interrupted her. "Tamsin, you're not helping. Oswin, this is a simple betrothal contract, not some hurried wedding for a girl in trouble."

"As if this one could get a man interested enough to make her pregnant." Mother gestured contemptuously at me and snorted.

She was definitely drunk. My face flamed at her words all the same. I pressed my lips together and stared at my untouched food. The sight of the capon congealing in its gravy on the plate turned my stomach, but I couldn't bear to look at any of my family.

He ignored her. "There's time to become acquainted before the wedding. Lord Dunleavy won't be a stranger to you for long."

" _What_?" I had never met Lord Dunleavy, but I knew the name. He was some kind of city lord from Silverymoon, who must be practically my parents' age. They were barking mad if they thought I was going to go live more than a month's journey away from Jessa and our village, marry some middle-aged man, and never see Britt again.

Not that they knew about Britt. It was possible I shouldn't have waited quite so long to have that uncomfortable conversation.

I could see Jessa trying to catch my eye from across the table, but I forced myself not to look at her. If I saw the fear and sympathy in her face, I wouldn't be able to keep from crying at the absurd unfairness of even having to take part in such a ridiculous discussion. Father respected composure, and I had to stay unruffled and appeal to his better judgment. Whatever Mother thought, he and I would reach some satisfactory accord, as we always did.

"Father." I made myself sound firm. "I am not marrying Lord Dunleavy."

I heard a derisive sound from Mother's end of the table, and the sound of wine pouring again.

"If it were my decision this conversation would be approached differently. But it's already settled, Oswin. Your mother went to considerable trouble to negotiate this for you."

"He's twice my age. It's an absurd notion." Even Mother, unhappy as she was with her pairing, hadn't been asked to marry an old man. "Not to mention the distance."

Father sighed. "I can appreciate that it might not seem like an exciting match for a girl your age. But he will give you stability and a comfortable life."

"I don't have to remind you that I already have all that here. The estate. The village." I gestured expansively. "You've raised me for this my whole life, in case you forget."

He shook his head. "You'll have a good life. You'll raise your children in peace and contentment."

"Not only am I not having children with an old man I don't even know, I'm also not going to keep discussing the prospect as if it's anything other than a distasteful hypothetical." I realized I was twisting Britt's ring around my finger under the table and stopped, clutching my hands together to strengthen my façade.

"Listen to me, Oswin," my father said sharply. "You've grown up now. You're of marrying age, and I won't see you made a spinster. Now, I understand you're resisting the idea now because you were caught off guard"—he glanced at Mother with irritation—"but once you've had time to get used to it you'll be grateful we did this for you. You _will_ be married."

 _Grateful_? Father must be drunker than she was.

I should have talked to him sooner about Britt and me. Britt had been pestering me about it for months. It was the only thing we'd ever seriously argued about, and this conversation was making me realize he'd been right all along. If I'd done like he wanted, it would have nipped this nonsense about Lord Dunleavy in the bud.

Breaking this stupid engagement would be uncomfortable, certainly, but they should have thought to mention the thing to me first. I couldn't be blamed for that part.

I looked at Father, evaluating his overall mood, and tried to decide how to proceed. I'd really have preferred to tell him about Britt _without_ mother present, but then, that was my fault for waiting this long. Father was a reasonable man, as everyone agreed, and cared little for titles or riches. In fact, I expected that after he got over the embarrassment of the failed wedding arrangement with Dunleavy, he would agree that Britt was a pragmatic choice for my husband—even if I _weren't_ utterly, preposterously in love with him. He wasn't anything like Father, but he was certainly the kind of person Father approved of. Mother wouldn't have much choice in the matter, when it came to it.

"I can certainly understand your need for me to marry, and to have children, and I'm not opposed to either of those things in principle," I said after thinking on it a moment. "In fact, I've been meaning to talk to you. I know titles aren't of particular importance to you. But keeping one's word _is_ , and as it happens I've al—"

Something, a dire warning, flashed in my father's eyes. He gave me a single, tight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. I couldn't make out what it meant, but it killed my momentum as I tried to understand what he was telling me.

I forced out a humorless laugh to show them I wasn't beaten just because I'd stopped mid-sentence. "This is a ludicrous thing to ask. Of anyone, but of me particularly. You can't have seriously thought I'd agree to such a thing, or that an earl would find me remotely suitable for a wife. I can't imagine what you told this man, but if I were fool enough to marry him he'd be after you inside a month for breach of contract." I paused. "Oh, my mistake—I guess with him being all the way in Silverymoon it'd take at least two months."

Mother laughed in a bitter-sounding way, sloshing her glass a little. "No one is _asking_ anything, my dear." The anger rolled off her in almost palpable waves.

 _I wasn't_ talking _to you_ —I didn't say. But I was running out of patience. "That kind of talk isn't very helpful, Mother."

"You _really_ are determined not to let me dress up any little bit of this indignity for you, aren't you?" She actually pointed at me.

"You're drunk," Father said bluntly. "You're not talking any sense."

I couldn't tear my eyes from my mother. I had never seen her unhinged like this. She raised her voice. "How's this for sense? Oswin, women of our station have a duty to obey. If that requires marrying a stranger to save your family's financial prospects, so be it. I did… and so, it seems, will you."

I frowned. "Father. What's she talking about? Financial prospects?"

"Tamsin—we agreed we weren't going to mention any—"

Mother's hysteria was starting to rattle me, despite my efforts to stay calm. The terrain seemed to have changed, and that unsettled me. Maybe this wasn't the argument I thought. I focused on keeping my voice from turning shrill. "Father. What did she mean, financial prospects?"

"All it means—"

"—it means your father got greedy and overconfident, and made a ruinous investment without asking the opinion of anyone else in this family. It means he's in debt, which means Brighton and Bright Hall are only nominally ours… at least until we give Dunleavy a wife in return for the forgiveness of that debt. You're not wrong in thinking you're entirely unsuited to be the wife of an earl—but where you _are_ wrong is in thinking any of that matters. You're not particularly charming, no, but you're young, and hopefully fertile. That's all that matters." She gave Father a vicious look. "Be proud, daughter. You fetched a better price than I ever thought you would when your father finally took you to market."

I was speechless. My mouth opened, but no words came out.

Father's voice was a tight, grim warning. "Tamsin. You're frightening the girl. You need to stop talking. _Now_."

Mother laughed. "Or you'll—what? Fill her head with more lies? When I was younger than her and my mother told me who I was marrying, I was already trained to go along with the story that you weren't my death sentence." She looked at me for a lingering moment with the most terrifying expression I'd ever seen on a person. "You know very well that _she's_ not the one to blame for thinking she has some kind of choice what she does with her life."

"Mother."

She ignored me. "All her life, you praised the girl for the wrong things—she's clever, she's intuitive, she takes after you. Gods, you wouldn't even let me name her for my sister! No, that wouldn't do at all—your eldest had to bear _your_ name. Of course she's fighting this, you arrogant bastard. And when she's crushed because she expected some other prospect than this one, then that's _your_ doing for letting her think brains and good sense could ever be as valuable to this family as her cunt."

I was too stunned to move, or to shed the tears suddenly caught in my throat, but Jessa flinched visibly. "That goes for you, too," Mother said, glancing at her. "Clever and intuitive are fine qualities… in sons. In daughters—remind me of that quaint expression they use in these parts… tits on a bull?—yes, well, you'd best learn that early, Jessa. Don't let your father make you his surrogate son like he did your sister."

"Gods be damned, woman, if you don't shut up I swear to the nine hells I will end you myself." Father rose from his chair, thunder in his voice. I couldn't remember ever seeing him so angry in my life.

Mother was up before he was, rising with surprising grace and taking the decanter in one hand. "That's another lesson for you, girls. If your lord husband doesn't like what you have to say, he can just end any argument with a sound beating." She looked at Father with icy triumph.

"I have _never_ touched you—"

"—enough to get these two on me," Mother spat.

That silenced him. He seemed not to know what to say next.

Mother swept dramatically toward the door, turning to address me before she left. "Oswin, I know you hate me. All daughters hate their mothers for telling them the truths that men aren't hard enough of heart to spell out. I don't begrudge you that fury. It's yours by right." She touched the door handle. "Here is your truth: you _will_ marry Lord Dunleavy, no matter how old or unsuitable or ill-favored you find him, and no matter how far that takes you from everything and everyone you know and care about. You will spread your legs and let him get at least one child on you, more if he insists, and then you'll behave how he likes and raise his brats whether you like them or him or any of it. Be grateful he's older than you hoped your husband would be—if you survive your childbed, maybe you'll outlive him and have the privilege of spending your final days as a young dowager."

She shot Father a withering look. "Your father has allowed you far too much freedom over the years. Don't let that tempt you to do something foolish like try to run away. Lest you take _any_ part of this for negotiable, let me be inescapably clear—you _will_ perform your duty to this family even if that means dragging you to the altar in chains."

Mother opened the door for her theatrical exit, then added, "At any rate, birds of our feather don't survive long if we chance to escape our cages."

The three of us sat in silence, listening to her tut at the servants caught listening outside the door as she whisked away through the hall toward her bedchambers.

"Well. I think you're both well familiar with your mother's taste for dramatics," Father said briskly. "None of this is so bad as all that."

Neither of us had spirit to reply. Jessa sat trembling in her chair, silent tears streaming down her face, and I was too numb.

"Jessa," he said, not unkindly. "Give us our privacy. Close the door behind you." She threw me an apologetic look, then fled gratefully.

I wanted to storm after her, to protest my fate, to do anything at all, but Mother had stripped everything down to the simple, ugly facts so effectively that nothing at all remained. Her words were terrible, but they, more than any of Father's explanations, had the devastating ring of truth.

I wasn't my father's clever girl who would take his place one day at the head of our family. He'd reserve that privilege for one of my male cousins, and if I couldn't figure out how to talk him out of it, I would be sent far away to bear the children of a man so desperate for an heir that he was willing to buy me outright.

I heard Cook, or someone, comforting Jessa, the much-loved pet of our household, on the other side of the door. Father waited to speak until the sounds of her voice and Jessa's sobs receded.

I wondered what he could possibly have to say to me after all that. He wasn't going to refute any of Mother's words, that much was clear. Elsewise, he would surely have spoken up in protest of her threat to clap me in irons for my wedding.

I wanted desperately to speak first, to resume the bitter fight for my life, but my voice wouldn't come.

Finally, Father cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I regret waiting so long to do this," he began. "It's a hard thing, and perhaps your mother was right when she said I'm too soft where you're concerned."

He paused, maybe to see if I had any answer to this, then went on. "It was harmless for a time, and you were discreet."

I stared at him in sudden horrified understanding. "No. Father, no— _no._ "

My father sighed. "I hold you and the boy blameless, of course. I was young once, too. It's my fault for not putting a stop to things sooner. I thought it was nothing more than a youthful dalliance that would run its course. Harmless fun."

I was more sickened by Father's matter-of-fact appraisal of me and Britt than by any of the terrible things Mother had said.

I realized with faint surprise that he was still talking. "… didn't realize you two had notions of anything else until I spoke to the boy myself. I should have seen it coming. Whatever your mother thinks, you've grown up into a handsome young woman."

I blinked. "What do you mean you talked to him?"

"I went and explained things to him and his father yesterday. He isn't happy, of course, but he understands the situation. I think the smith was relieved to have matters taken out of his hands. I expect he's been trying to get the boy to break things off for a while now." Father frowned as if looking for the right words. "Oswin, I'm very sorry. I thought a little freedom would be good for you. I didn't know things had gotten this out of hand."

The one pure, sweet, unspoiled joy in my life—and Father was trying to smash it from my hands and dismiss its memory as a frivolous physical infatuation gotten "out of hand."

"Did you know the whole time?" I felt my voice crack.

"Last year's spring festival, unless I'm mistaken."

He wasn't. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at him. "Does Mother know?" How cruel she was, and how much she must hate me, if she had known my plans and still said those things.

"Gods, no. She doesn't talk to people from the village. And I might have missed the fact that a young man gave my daughter a betrothal ring right under my nose, but I'm not fool enough to share something like this with her. No, your secret is safe with me."

I felt my throat threaten to close and squeezed my eyes harder shut. "He told you about my ring?" I asked weakly.

Father waited a half beat before he replied. "He seemed to think it would change my mind. He didn't yield without a fight, I'll give the boy that. He seems a good lad. You could have done much worse for yourself."

I opened my eyes, first incredulous that he had the audacity to blithely compliment my taste in romantic partners after breaking off my secret engagement behind my back, and then disgusted to have my prediction proved out that Father would like Britt.

It was a struggle to control myself. Suddenly I wondered if this was how Mother felt, all the time.

"Truly," I agreed, pressing Britt's ring into my hand so hard it ached. "I could have gone and found myself an earl twenty years my senior who lives a month's journey from anything I ever cared about."

"All right. I deserved that," Father said after a short silence. "I—"

"—all this time you let me think nothing was wrong. I could have been helping you with a solution, and still you said _nothing_."

"I thought you would be happier without all this hanging over you. I thought waiting would give you more time to just be young. Can you try to understand?"

I didn't have to try. Telling me about any of his machinations would have meant having to own the cruelty of having allowed me the expectation of a free, self-determined future even as he made arrangements intended to place that life forever out of my reach.

"Tell me, was any of it true? What you told Lord Kerwin that day in your study?"

He looked confused. Maybe he didn't remember. Maybe I'd imagined it.

"You told him I was as good as any son. I was going to take your place one day. You—" I realized I didn't know how to finish. "You sounded… proud of me. I thought you were."

Father had at least the decency to seem a little pained at this. "You weren't meant to hear that."

"Then you didn't mean it. You let me spend _years_ thinking this was my birthright. But I was never going to be your heir, was I?"

"That's not what I said."

"No? Then make me understand."

He sighed heavily. "Gods, my girl, this is an unjust world, for a mind like yours to be born into a female body."

I looked at my father, not even trying to conceal my distaste. "That's not an explanation."

"Things… changed."

"Well, it hardly matters. I promised myself to someone else. I'm ruined for this marriage." I stared my father down and forced myself past my embarrassment. "As you're evidently well aware, we did all manner of things that people do when they pledge a lifelong commitment. I am _not_ marrying someone else."

"If I had the luxury of indulging that sort of vanity, I would. I don't."

"I can't marry him. I'm pregnant," I blurted, startled by the outrageousness of the lie.

Father looked at me for a long, disapproving moment. "That's not like you, Oswin," he said at length. "I have to say, I'm disappointed that you would be so careless."

"You know what else isn't like me? Agreeing to marry some man twice my age who has been on the market more than twenty years but somehow despite his apparently vast wealth still has no wife."

"It's not a bad thing, necessarily," Father mused. "It establishes that you can get with child. Dunleavy seems desperate enough for an heir. It's even possible he won't require you to be"—he waved his hand vaguely—"cleansed… before the wedding. Perhaps the appearance of an heir is of greater import than the child being of his own body. Either way, the date will need to be advanced."

If he wasn't calling my bluff, _that_ was how my father was willing to think about his own grandchild. As something requiring potential "cleansing."

"Father. Stop. I'm not doing this. You're trying to give me to some lord because you owe him money… like I'm your _property_. That's old-fashioned nonsense and it's not how this family works."

"It's not that simple. Options are limited now in ways they weren't then."

"Because of money? Believe me, I will help you solve our money problems. Trust me when I tell you I'm motivated beyond measure."

He was quiet so long I started to think maybe I'd only spoken in my head. "Oswin." He spoke in a low voice. "You _are_ solving our money problems."

I shook my head. "No. _No._ I am marrying _Britt_. I'll help you dig out of this. My whole life is at stake. There is _nothing_ I won't do to make this work."

Father shook his head right back. "Oswin, no. You have to stop fighting this and find a way to live with it."

"Never," I whispered furiously. "I will _never_. You spent my whole life teaching me everything you know, and now you want to let everything we worked for go to one of your sister's sons, instead of me? Because… I'm not a man? I'm smarter than all my cousins, and you know it."

"Of course not your cousins, what do you take me for? Your male children with Dunleavy will inherit Brighton. You won't lead directly, perhaps, but any man who marries a strong woman like you ends up being ruled by her in the end. You'll have influence, more than you realize, and you'll guide your sons with the same good judgment you'd have wielded as my heir."

"Rescind my inheritance, _fine_ —deny my title, _fine_ —give everything I worked for my whole life to someone whose only merit is being male, _fine_!" I was nearly shouting, and I didn't even care anymore. "But _I am not marrying Dunleavy_. I _will_ honor our family. I _will_ help you in any way but this one. This is _your_ mistake, Father—you should never have agreed to this contract without ever consulting me. I don't envy you the embarrassment of breaking the agreement, but break it you must."

He was angry, I could tell from the set of his jaw, but he kept it under control. "Oswin, I don't think you appreciate the magnitude of this situation—the kind of trouble this family is in."

"How can I, when you won't tell me a goddamned thing _about_ the situation?" I waited a beat to see if he cared to rectify that. "That's what I thought. Well, Father, I'm marrying Britt, or no one. I'll go to the village and drag him in front of a priest _tonight_ , if that's what it takes to show you how deadly serious I am."

"Do you love this man, truly?"

"Yes. _Yes_. That's what I'm trying to _tell_ you."

"Then you understand how stupid it would be to place him in such a dangerous position, solely for the sake of your own sentiments."

"Dangerous position." I looked at him in revolted disbelief.

"You're too young to be put through the grief of widowhood. I think we can both agree on that."

"Now you're threatening to kill the person most dear to me in the world? What a noble tactic, Father. I don't believe your disgusting bluff for a second, by the way."

He stared me down. "You've said your part, daughter. Now it's your turn to hear how deadly serious _I_ am. You don't want to think of yourself as property—well, that's fine. It's mere vanity, though perhaps understandable. But we all of us are the property of this family, and this estate. You think this was my first choice for you, that I do this from petty spite? It was not, and I do not." He sighed heavily, as if my desperate repudiations had grievously tested his patience. "Lest you mistake my warning for idle threat—please recall that you have already made this young man party to a capital crime by your mere involvement with him. Given the extent of your misconduct, it is my legal right, should I choose to exercise it, to have him hanged at dawn. I recommend you do _not_ test me."

I looked at him with unyielding hatred.

"This conversation ends here, Oswin. Rebellion gains nothing, for anyone. You will fulfill your responsibility to this family."

"I would rather _die_ ," I snarled.

"Speaking of idle threats," Father said coldly. "That's the sort of thing that overdramatic, silly, _womanish_ creatures like your mother resort to—and they never mean it. Should you find yourself seriously contemplating such a craven escape, however—know that I will uphold this family's reputation in any event. But I would be disappointed to see you shirk your duty and leave your sister to fulfill the contract in your place."

I couldn't help recoiling in horror at these words.

Father didn't react. "She is far too young, of course. Some delay would be required, though Dunleavy won't wait long. Two years, maybe three, he'll allow us. Still young, but not unheard of." After a short silence, he added, "Do you see, now? You're stronger than your sister. It had to be you."

The thought that he might have even momentarily considered offering Jessa to someone for a wife simultaneously curdled my stomach and crushed my remaining fight in a single blow. Of course I was stronger than her. She was twelve, to my twenty.

"That's it, then. Just like that." I searched his face for any sign that I'd misheard his threat to marry my little sister to a man thirty years her senior. The resignation I saw in his eyes only stoked my fury—as if _he_ were the one to suffer for his mistakes.

"Yes."

I turned that over in my head and examined it from all angles. He let me sit in silence while I traversed my maze and found only dead ends.

"I want something from you," I said at last.

"If it is in my power to give it."

"Your formal oath. You will swear you'll never do this to Jessy. Swear to me, to the Triad, to anyone listening. _No matter_ what happens to the family. She'll choose her own husband, or none."

Something hardened inside me as I watched him consider my words. Father took oathgiving seriously, which meant he wouldn't make a promise he didn't believe he could keep. The delay meant it was taking him time to decide whether he could pledge in good faith to sell only one daughter into conjugal slavery.

Eventually he nodded his acquiescence. "Very well. You have my oath. I swear it to the Gods. Jessa will be free to choose her own husband."

"Or?" I prompted.

"Or no husband, if she so wishes."

It wasn't enough, not by far, but it was something. "You've won, Father," I said. "But if you break this oath in spirit or in substance, for _any_ reason… I swear on every stone in our family plot that I will put you in the ground myself."

Father laughed aloud. "I've always admired your spirit, my girl." The bastard had the nerve to sound _fond_. "I don't think such measures will be necessary. But, I appreciate the confirmation that you genuinely care for this family, and that you will honor your obligations."

I kept my expression neutral to deny him even the slight satisfaction of a reaction. "What now?" I asked instead of killing him with my bare hands.

"I'll communicate with Dunleavy about advancing the date. And if needed, arrange for a purification ritual," Father continued. "Until then, your mother thinks it's best you stay at the house from today onward unless you have a chaperone, and I do agree with her on that point. No more rambling about the village every time you get bored. I can see from this discussion that the news has been a jolt for you, and you'll reconcile to the change more quickly if you aren't being teased with things you can't have."

So I was to be their prisoner, and Mother my gaoler. And my sister their hostage guaranteeing my cooperation. I looked at him, unable even to nod my numb acquiescence.

Father seemed relieved that I had stopped fighting him, and that relief evidently made him magnanimous. "That being said, your young man was clearly distraught by our conversation. I considered retracting the offer, but now that you've seen reason—I told him I would permit you to see him once more, for you two to say your farewells. I trust that you won't do anything foolish, now that you understand what is at stake."

I could tell I was supposed to be grateful for this pathetic morsel, and I despised him for that. But I also knew better than to turn down this tiny boon out of spite. Seeing Britt one final time might well be the last nice thing that ever happened to me.

"Tomorrow, then." I heard myself speak as if it were someone else. I placed my hands flat on the table to keep them from trembling.

Father nodded. "Oswin," he said hesitantly. "I hope you understand that I've always… had a particular fondness for you." He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back before he could touch me, appalled he would even attempt such a liberty.

"And Father," I said with all the icy ferocity I could muster. "I hope _you_ understand that I will go to my grave remembering that as the single most incredible lie I was ever told."

It was a pity Mother wasn't there to witness his speechless face. It might have made her proud of me for the first time.


	4. The Price We Pay for Love

I ascended the stairs to my bedchamber, unsure what propelled me now that my parents had extinguished my essential animating force, and equally uncaring.

It was peaceful, to lie motionless on my bed, turning things over in my head and contemplating the peculiar lack of feeling I had concerning my complete reversal of fortune.

With martial efficiency, Mother had stripped away everything I thought I knew about my place in the world. But as meticulous as her evisceration had been, Father had been the one to tear my bloody guts out and then to pile them back in my hands with the expectation that I appreciate the gesture.

Everything I treasured as precious, unique, and private was unmasked as hollow, cheap, and more or less communal.

It sounded like the sort of situation I ought to have an opinion about, but then again, the prospect of feeling something other than numb despair seemed like a problem for the future. I began taking inventory of the things I still had left to lose.

There weren't many.

Jessa, it occurred to me at first, but she was as good as lost. The marriage and the distance involved represented the forfeiture of everyone I knew here. I did some calculations in my head—Waterdeep was about a two week ride from our home. Silverymoon must be five or six hundred miles north of that. It was easily a six or seven week journey, assuming good weather and a steady pace. That meant after the wedding, I might never see my sister again.

My parents had asserted their rights over me with unassailable authority, and soon my lord husband would take the reins. He wanted me for a broodmare, and little more, and no man would allow his pregnant wife or the mother of his young children to travel more than a month home simply because she was lonely for her sister.

I started over.

Myself. My thoughts. I still owned those. I was alive. I wasn't yet ready to evaluate these things for their objective worth. After all, I was about to pay dearly for the hubris of having assumed the rationality of my arguments to Father could outweigh the fact they sprang from a female mind.

My free will. That was a purely theoretical notion at this point. The extortionate personal cost of exercising it functionally annulled its value.

Jessa's will, then. That was real. My martyrdom had bought my father's pledge to spare her my fate. And while he had laughed in my face at the assertion that I would enforce his oath—I had no intention of permitting him to break his promise and continue drawing breath.

Someone knocked softly at the door. Cook, or Bonnie. I ignored it. My sister wouldn't have knocked, and everyone else would know enough to leave me in peace. Whoever it was took a little while to give up.

I resumed my musings, watching the firelight flicker on the wall.

Britt would live, as a result of my agreement with Father. That was good, so very good. I couldn't bear the thought of him perishing for the sake of my foolishness.

But… he would do so without me. Eventually he would move on and marry a nice village girl who doubtless already had her wistful sights set on him, and who would do her best not to be too impatient for the duration of whatever brief mourning period he observed for me. That girl, not me, would share his bed, and run the shop with him, and get teased and hugged and her hair mussed up, and every other entitlement I thought would be mine to enjoy. They would have children, probably several, and because it was impossible to know Britt and not love him, she and they would all care for him every bit as much as I did. It would be a good life.

I wondered if he would think of me, sometimes, if he quarreled with his wife, or went up to the smithy loft, or when he saw one of those stupid lemon tarts I liked so much.

I wondered if he would ask me to give back his ring.

Even lying as I was at the very edge of my bed, I barely made it to the chamber pot before retching up what felt like everything I'd eaten for the last month. I knelt there a long time, heaving and spitting up bile, before I trusted my stomach enough to reach up to my bed stand for the cup of water I kept there. I rinsed my mouth and swallowed.

I needed to not think about Britt, at all. I hated the idea of forgoing my last visit, but maybe it was better for us both if I didn't go see him again. I couldn't decide what was harder—seeing him one more time and knowing all the while that every gesture and word and look and touch was the very last of its kind—or not seeing him again at all and having to endure my imagination's ever-shifting fictional version of events, since I would never know for certain what he thought or felt about any of this.

Britt might have an easier time getting on with his life if he didn't have to see me again and witness my irrepressible grief at our parting. To feel forsaken might leave him more angry than sad, and being angry with me might mean he wouldn't waste as much time grieving. It might be a kinder thing, in the end. For him, anyway.

I was _supposed_ to not be thinking about Britt, I thought as I spent another ten minutes gagging up the water I'd drunk. Limp and exhausted, I rested my forehead on the rim of my chamber pot, trying to think of anything other than the loss of my very favorite person.

I couldn't.

Sometime later I heard another knock. "Lady Oswin," whispered Bonnie. "Are you awake?" She waited, knocking and whispering a few more times before she left. I rolled onto my side and curled into a ball.

Despite his concluding display of magnanimity, I had so thoroughly overplayed my hand that Father wouldn't trust me to have truly subordinated myself to his will until the wedding was actually done. He knew his threats to destroy Britt and Jessa would keep me compliant—but only so long as I couldn't see some way of getting out of it. He would leave nothing to chance.

There would be no freedom, now or later, and the stupidity of my lie about being pregnant meant that everything would happen even faster.

Other options.

Was it possible to expire from sheer grief? It _felt_ possible. If that happened, or if I died from fever, or some other natural cause, Father couldn't very well hold that against Jessa. I'd read plenty of novels in which the heroine, bereft of options, simply succumbed to her loss of will to survive. That was something to think about. It didn't sound half bad right now.

Or, I could kill my father, damn the consequences, and go to the gallows a free woman. I knew it should scare me how appealing that was. I pictured Father toppling face first into his breakfast porridge, dead from poison, which was a little bit gratifying, until I recalled him saying once that poisoning was a weak and womanly sort of way to kill a person.

He had a point. Murdering Father would be much more rewarding for the both of us if it were by my own hand. And if I failed, there would still be a certain satisfaction in having tried. The thought was strangely cheering, when I considered the perverse triumph of forcing Father to put me to death after my descent into patricidal mania.

I decided to save killing Father for later valuation. I liked the idea, but it probably wasn't something to undertake hastily.

Also in novels, people in truly desperate circumstances sometimes sold themselves to a devil, or a demon, or some other hellish being. I had little idea how to find such a creature, especially since I wasn't going to be seeing anything but the inside of my room for quite a long time, but the thought of cursing my father with infernal wrath had undeniable allure. It was possible that being in thrall to a devil would represent an improvement on my current situation with Father.

Perhaps I could devise some way to escape _with_ Jessa. Father could scarcely force her to marry anyone if we both disappeared and were never seen again. And… Britt would be safe, for I expected that, being unable to actually produce his ruined daughter as evidence, Father would have difficulty proving any legal claim against him. And he would have a rebellion on his hands if he put to death a productive member of the community for no other reason than to punish his runaway daughter.

The last seemed best, even though it still meant living without Britt, because it saved both of them. But I puzzled over the logistics of it and struggled to think of any scenario that didn't get me and Jessa both caught and in worse trouble than we were already. I turned the problem over and over in my head and got nowhere with any of it.

It was dark when I woke, quiet and unalarmed, to Jessa tripping over me where I lay curled on the floor.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked after catching herself against the bed and the bed stand. She set her taper down and knelt next to me, touching my shoulder.

While I tried to remember the answer, she settled the question for herself. "Oh. Oh, Os. You were sick. I'm sorry." She pushed the chamber pot back under the bed and turned back to me. I felt her little hand creep tentatively into mine. "What time is it?" I asked, twining my fingers with hers.

"I don't know exactly. Late. Aren't you cold? Your whole body is like ice."

"Is it?" I flexed my fingers curiously. If I was cold, I hadn't noticed.

"Here, you're still in your dinner dress. Let me." I sat up at her urging and obediently let her undo all the complicated things that held my clothes on. When she had me down to my smallclothes, Jessa kicked the rest into the corner, threw the bedcovers back, and made me drink some more water before climbing into bed with her.

I turned onto my side again and faced my sister with eyes closed, pressing my forehead to hers. "Mm. This is nice."

When she spoke again her voice sounded strange. "I love you."

That stirred me a bit. I slipped an arm around her and pulled her small body close to mine. She was quiet a long time before asking, "What are you going to do?"

"Hmm?"

"What's your plan?"

"Plan?"

"Yes, you always have a plan."

Did I? That was interesting. As I ruminated on this, I forgot to answer her.

"Os, you're scaring me."

"Oh. Don't be scared." I put my hand on hers. She always liked that.

After a moment I felt her hand slip out of mine and touch my cheek. That felt good. I closed my eyes again and leaned into her.

"What's the matter with you?"

The question confused me. I frowned, trying to concentrate.

She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. "You don't feel feverish. Did Cook give you something? A potion?"

I tried to remember if that sounded familiar.

"Just a second."

I nodded. "Mm."

After a moment I felt her weight shift in the bed. Then her hand collided, hard, with my face.

I jerked away, yelping with surprise and pain. "Gods be damned, Jessy, what the hell was that for?"

Her voice was relieved. "There you are. That didn't hurt too much, did it? Bonnie told me once that if a person gets a terrible shock sometimes it makes them go a bit funny. She said you might be able to bring them round again with a hard slap in the face."

"A terrible shock?" I repeated, and began to shake as the events of the evening flooded in on me, first in patches, then in sickening waves.

She was a child. I couldn't make my problems her problems. Except, the other thing I couldn't do was stop the choking, hiccupping sobs tearing through me. "Oh, gods, Jessy, my life is over." I forced the words out in breathless gasps.

She sat up and put her short arms around my shoulders, rocking me a long time until I managed to quiet myself. "That's why you need a plan," she said when I calmed enough to listen. Her eyes shone with unshed tears in the light from the taper.

I didn't answer. How could I explain to her how many ideas I'd considered and discarded because Father already had a barred door in front of each one?

"What did Father say right after I left? I came back to listen at the door as soon as I could get rid of Cook, but I missed the first part."

"Oh, no, Jessy. I didn't want you to hear any of that."

"Was it about you and Britt?"

I swallowed miserably. Of course she knew all about that, if she'd been listening at the door.

"Yes."

"Britt is… your sweetheart?"

Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled over again. "He _was_ my betrothed. And… he's my nothing now. Father took care of that." I squeezed my eyes shut. "Father took care of everything. Oh, but he's _so_ generous. He's permitting me to visit one more time, so we can say some polite goodbyes before we never see each other again." I felt my stomach turn again and closed my eyes against the sick feeling. "I can't talk about Britt right now."

My sister held me until it passed. "I was so stupid to fight Father like I did," I said after a while. "I made things so much worse. I never thought he would do something like this. I thought he would care, a little, how I felt."

She was patient with me, even though I couldn't stop crying. It was strange, to feel like the little sister for the first time. She was good at it. I hoped this was how I made her feel when things were normal.

I felt sick again thinking about how nothing would ever be normal for us again. Jessa stroked my hair, and wiped the tears from my face, and patted my shoulders.

"All right, Os," she said after a while. "We both know what has to happen. We just don't want to say it."

"What?" My throat was still sore from crying, and from being sick.

"You have to go." She cleared her throat, hard. "One way or another, this marriage will kill you. You have to run." She said it firmly, in the kind of voice I might once have used to issue orders like, _finish your porridge_ , or _I don't care if she's waiting for the unicorn—you can't leave your doll outside overnight_.

"Jessy, no. If you heard the whole thing, you know why I can't do that. I don't think I can get past Father making you get married in my place. At least I'm of age. You'll be fifteen, maybe only fourteen."

She was quiet a long moment. "If you won't for yourself, then you owe it to your baby."

I choked up. "There's no baby. I made it up. I thought it would convince Father, but all it did was make him decide to get me married all the faster." I started to cry again. "And I'm _glad_ there isn't. Father would make me get rid of her."

"Oh." Jessa put her arms back around me. "Oh, no. I'm sorry. I thought it was real."

"It's better this way. I already feel like losing Britt will kill me."

"That's why you get him to go with you. He has a trade that'll be useful anywhere you go. You're smart, you'll learn a trade of your own. Meanwhile, you have plenty of things you can do for money—scribing, keeping accounts. You'll go somewhere Father will never find you, change your name, and have a real life. Not the one you thought, maybe. But one you chose."

"Jessy, no. I can't do that."

"You need to listen to me. I thought about this tonight, a lot."

"So did I, and I said no."

"Forgive me for saying so, but you're not in a problem-solving frame of mind right now. Trust me, running is your best—maybe your only—chance to get out of this."

I broke into fresh sobs. "The answer is _no_. You know what Father will do if I leave. Stop _asking_."

Jessa took me by the shoulders and gave me a fierce shake. "This is your _life_ , Oswin. Stop trying to be so damned noble and listen to me. You're making decisions about me and what I need, without asking me what _I_ think! That's what Father did to you, in case you don't remember."

"No, it _isn't_!" I was outraged at the comparison. "Don't you _dare_ liken me to him!"

"Isn't it? Father made decisions he thought were in your best interest, trying to make the best of a bad situation. And he never asked you for your ideas, or told you the family was in trouble, or got your opinion. Tell me how this is different."

"Because Father is trying to save himself, and I'm trying to save _you_ ," I spat.

"Good—get angry—you _should_ be angry." Jessa propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at me, her expression thoughtful. "Do you remember the time I almost drowned?"

I shuddered. "Yes."

"Tell me about that day."

"No. It was probably the worst day of my life. I don't want to remember that."

"Really. Today wasn't the worst?"

I didn't answer.

"Then tell me about it. What could have possibly made that day worse than today?"

I wiped my eyes. "Stop."

"No. Say it aloud. Why was that day worse than today?"

I felt tears slipping down my cheeks again. "Because I thought I was going to lose you forever."

Jessa touched my arm. "But you didn't. Why?"

I shrugged.

"Fine. I'll tell it, if you won't. I wasn't minding you, and I was being stupid, and I fell in the creek. And it was high and fast-running because of the spring rains. I was under and choking and breathing in water before I even knew what happened. But the last thing I remembered was you pulling me up. You'd jumped in without even thinking about it.

"And then I woke up the next day and I was fine except my chest and back were all black and blue where you thumped the water out of me. You hadn't left my side the whole time. Later, Bonnie finally told me about it. How you came running to the house with me over your shoulder, screaming. She said it took you hours to stop crying, even though you got half drowned yourself in fishing me out."

"I was really scared," I whispered.

"But you saved me, Os. When I needed you most."

"It's my job. I will always do that. So I'm doing it again now. What's your point?"

"My point is, I'm not the one needs saving this time. You, on the other hand."

"Jessy…"

"You just admitted the worst day of your life was the day you thought you'd lose me forever. But you did something to stop that happening." Jessa took my hand and gave it a hard squeeze. "So, you can understand why the worst day of _my_ life is the day Father broke your spirit so completely that you actually buckled and agreed to let him marry you to some stranger in the far north."

"Oh, Jessy. If you were a little older you'd understand it's more complicated than that."

"Not to me, it isn't. Do you know my first memory?"

"No."

"It's just wispy and faint—but it's you. I must have been sick, because everything hurt, and I couldn't stop crying. You gave me some kind of medicine, on a rag. I think you sang."

I recalled her, tiny and furious in this very bed, gumming my hand until it hurt, alternately sobbing and screaming. "Your baby teeth were coming in. It wasn't medicine, exactly. Cook gave me brandy to rub on your gums. To numb the pain." I looked at her honey-gold hair in the candlelight, remembering what a cloudy mess of white-blonde fluff it had been at the time. "Gods, you were a holy terror when you were little."

"Do you remember why it was you doing that? Instead of a grown-up?"

"Cook and Bonnie were working themselves practically to death—and Mother, well, I don't know exactly what was wrong, but she took to bed for a long time after you were born. I didn't see her very much, for a long time. You were walking and talking already."

"No governess?"

"Father doesn't believe in governesses. He thinks they're too likely to be a poor influence. We had to make due." I twiddled a bit of her hair between my fingers. "You were so little then. I never thought you'd remember something from so long ago. You weren't even a year yet."

"Which means _you_ were barely even nine."

"Father said I did well, caring for you. It made me feel very grown-up."

"You changed my nappies, and you fed me, and you privy-trained me—"

It caught me off guard when her words made me snort with laughter through my tears. "You _hated_ being privy trained." I wiped my eyes.

"Did I?"

"You told me you didn't care and you would wet your drawers forever if you wanted and I couldn't stop you. I'm surprised you don't remember that one. It was a terrible row. You were incensed that I would have the gall to suggest we'd both be better off once you stopped peeing our bed every night."

"What did you do?"

"I bribed you with lemon sweets."

She laughed. "Did it work?"

"Not only that, it went quicker than I thought. You came around inside a week."

"You always did know how to make me see things your way." She found my hand in the dark and slipped her fingers through mine. "Today I return that favor."

"Jessy—"

"—no, don't argue right now, just be quiet and listen."

I didn't like it. I nodded anyway.

"I'm years older now than you were when I was born and you started taking care of me. That should never have been your responsibility. Did anyone ever once say you were too young to do that?"

"…no. And I didn't mind doing those things. Because I love you."

"I know you do. That's why you're being so dumb and pig-headed about this. I'm learning that love can make a smart person very stupid, Os."

I snorted. Not that she was wrong.

"I will _not_ let Father use me to force you into a marriage that I know in my heart you can't survive. I don't know if it's the harsh winters that will get you, or childbearing, or just plain heartbreak—but if you do this then I know the next time I see you will be at your funeral. If even then."

"It won't be that bad. Obviously I'm upset now, but people get used to all kinds of things they think at first they can't live with. It'll take me time."

"No. I refuse. You're the drowning one now."

"Jessy. You lose me if I run away, too."

"But I'll know you left a free woman, not a slave to some lord who has to buy himself a wife, and who will use you up until you're gone. I'll know you're alive."

I opened my mouth, but couldn't get any words out.

I felt her hands cupping either side of my face. " _Promise_ me."

My eyes welled up again and I couldn't answer for a long moment. "Let me think on it. I'm _not_ promising—not—not yet. But if I do like you want. What then?"

"Well… I'll tell you the rest of the plan in a while. But I will tell you… you have to leave tomorrow. And that would mean…" She made a funny coughing sound. "That would mean this was our last night. My last night to ask you sister questions."

I closed my eyes and tried to banish the ache in my chest. "That makes me so sad."

"Me too." Just like that, she sounded like my baby sister again.

I ruffled my fingers through her hair and forced myself to calm down. "You messed up the covers while you were lecturing me. Get back under here."

Jessa wriggled back under the blankets and squirmed her tiny body against me. "What are your sister questions?" I asked, slipping my arm around her.

"Did you have sex with Britt?"

I sputtered and gave her a little shove. "Oh my gods, that is none of your business!"

"But this is my last chance to ask you."

"Oh, gods. Just a second." I sat up and reached for the taper, blowing it out. I didn't want her to see me burning with embarrassment. "All right. Fine. Yes. I did."

"Oh, good."

"Why _good_?"

"Because I need to know all about that."

"No, Jessy, you're too young. And it's… private. I don't know how to talk about it. Isn't there something else you'd rather discuss?"

"What, like how to perfect my Calimportian embroidery technique?" She gave me an ornery little kick under the covers. "I can ask other people everything else. But… you're the only one who will tell me the real truth about grown-up things. And you'll be gone."

I was still thinking this over when she ducked her head into my shoulder with sudden forceful chagrin. "All right, so maybe I just think about this kind of thing sometimes, so I want to know."

"Oh?" I asked mildly. "Do you?"

"Or, maybe a lot. A _lot_ a lot. Is that what happens to people when they grow up? Or am I"—Jessa gulped against my arm—"a wanton?"

My first impulse at her shamefaced admission was to laugh, but then it occurred to me how young I was myself the first time such concerns came up, and how anxious about the discovery of or judgment for my wicked curiosities. "No, you're not a… wanton." What a strange age twelve was, I thought, recalling how entirely adult she'd sounded not five minutes earlier. "I can promise you that." I rubbed her back reassuringly. "It's normal, as far as I know."

"I wanted to ask you that a long time now," she admitted. "How do you know?"

I stifled a laugh. "Well… all right. I'll tell you a story. You were probably about four, too little to remember very much, but when I was about your age Lady Karek came to stay with us for the summer. She was Mother's friend from her girlhood."

She lifted her head, at least partly recovered from her disgraceful confession. "She smiled a lot? She had red hair?"

I nodded, my hair rustling on the pillow.

Jessy twisted around to face me. "I remember. She was nice. And Mother was happy when she was there. I remember wishing she would stay, so Mother would always be happy. What about her, though? Is she the one who told you about… things?"

"Gods, no. I would never have been brave enough to ask. Even if I knew the right questions, which I didn't. You probably know more now than I did. But Lady Karek had… this book."

"She showed it to you?"

"No. I snooped in her things, all right? She and Mother were out riding one day and I was bored. Now be quiet. The book was called _The Highwayman_." I paused, wavering a little in my resolve.

"What? Don't stop there. I told you mine."

"I know." If Jessa was brave to reveal herself to me as a possible wanton, then maybe I owed her the awkward story of my confused summer of solitary degeneracy. I thought of the priestess of Sune, whose frank talk on the subject of sex had mortified me, but had also been my only source of genuinely useful information.

Then again, the Sunite priestess hadn't been asked to draw upon specific, highly embarrassing personal anecdotes in dispensing her advice.

"Os?"

"Sorry. I was thinking. So, the book. It was about a… high born lady who is taken prisoner by bandits while journeying to meet her betrothed, who lives far away, for the first time. Her men-at-arms defend her bravely, but they're all killed."

" _Oh_! And is she a proper lady, with bosoms?"

I groaned. "I can't believe I'm even telling you about this, it's so embarrassing. Her abductors—"

"—does she get _ravished_?!"

"Shut up and listen, will you? I'm already dying from mortification and you are making that so much worse."

Jessy gave an excited little shiver and nodded contritely.

"Her abductors plan to hold her ransom, but she's clever and brave. She escapes from the thieves' den, although by the time she manages to elude the men they send to find her, she's hopelessly lost. But a gentleman outlaw discovers her wandering, and saves her before she can succumb to starvation and thirst."

"Does _he_ ravish her?"

"No. Be quiet. He talks to her instead. She doesn't know why she trusts a strange man she just met, but no man has ever been so interested in hearing what she has to say. She tells him her story, all about her life, everything. How she doesn't want to marry the lord her father chose."

"And _then_ does he—"

"—will you _stop_ asking me if she gets ravished, please?"

"Sorry."

"And in fact, he doesn't even touch her. She's astonished. None of the lady's many suitors ever cared about what she thinks. And now this ruffian has her all alone in the forest. She's at his mercy and he could do anything he wants to her… but he doesn't."

I heard her take a deep breath and could tell she was exercising considerable control in resisting the urge to interject. "No, he doesn't change his mind and ravish her then either."

"I didn't say anything!"

"She's so surprised at his chivalry that she asks him why he hasn't threatened her womanly virtue. He tells her his sad story. Which is, he never knew his mother, because the selfsame thing happened to her, and the men who captured her _weren't_ gentleman. She escaped and went back to her family, but she was with child by then."

I paused grudgingly for her. "All right, go ahead."

"Because of all the ravishing."

I rolled my eyes, even though I knew she couldn't see it in the dark. "Yes. Because of that. After her ordeal, she was a ruined woman, with no prospects. She bore the son she carried, but couldn't live with the shame."

"That's stupid. None of it was her fault."

"Ssh. It's a story. His poor mother was so unhappy with her lot that she drank poison, even though her son was but a babe at her breast. So the gentleman outlaw grew up with that shadow hanging over him. And he saw how cruel men could be, and swore he would never do wrong by a woman, in remembrance of his lady mother. Because he was a bastard, her family had no love for him, except for his grandmother, who told him his mother's story and raised him well. But she grew old and died, leaving him with no reason to stay with his mother's people, so he ran away to become a highwayman."

"Then what?"

"He avenged his mother by killing all who remained of the gang of thugs who captured her. And he formed his own band of thieves and made a life for himself, in the forest."

"But then he meets the heroine, deep in the woods."

"Yes. She's so moved by his tale that she makes up her mind to stay there with him and become a lady thief, if he will have her."

"This is a very long story."

"Tell me about it." I laughed at the memory. "I was like you, I kept trying to guess when the ravishing would happen," I admitted. "And I could only read it in these short little bursts when everyone was gone, because if I got caught I knew I'd never get to finish it at all. It took me till the end of summer just to get as far as I've told you, and then it was time for Lady Karek to go home." I felt my face grow warm again, but made myself laugh it off. "I was _desperate_ to know how it ended."

"What did you do?"

I coughed. "I may have… pretended illness in order to be excused from the breakfast table before her carriage was packed, so I could steal it from her trunk."

Jessa drummed my arm delightedly with both hands. "You _didn't_!"

"I decided, she was a grown woman from a big city. She got her hands on that one, surely she could replace it. I, on the other hand, might never have another opportunity to possess such an artifact." I laughed despite myself. "I was _so_ afraid of being caught. In my mind it was certainly the first thing she would check on before leaving, and the house would be torn apart to ensure its safe return. Everyone would know my terrible secret!"

"What really happened?"

"Nothing. She didn't check her baggage before leaving, or if she did she certainly didn't want to raise a fuss having everyone look for her misplaced dirty book."

"Does that mean you still have it?"

"Gods, yes, of course I do." I put my hands over my flaming face, even though I knew she couldn't see me blushing. "I've read the stupid thing probably a hundred times… certain parts more than others."

"It must be very good."

"It's really not," I said, letting her pull my hands away from my face. "But let's face it, a young wanton must settle for what she can get."

Jessa laughed and squeezed my arm again. "How does it end?"

"I think you ought to find out for yourself."

She gasped. "You'd let me _read_ it?"

"Well, last time I checked, dirty books weren't on the list of required provisions for taking flight from one's arranged marriage."

I felt her tense hopefully next to me. "So you agree to go, then."

"I don't know. Maybe. But no matter, the book is yours if you want it. There's a loose floorboard next to my wardrobe. It's in there."

"Does it go into a lot of detail?" she asked with interest. "About… everything?"

"Ah, no. Not nearly enough. In fact"—I changed my mind midsentence—"it doesn't."

"What were you going to say? In fact, what?"

"Nothing. I wasn't."

"You're such a liar."

"… maybe."

"Oh, please tell me. Are you embarrassed? I promise not to laugh."

"Yes, I'm embarrassed, and no, I don't want to tell you." I wrinkled my nose. "But I will. Because you're a brat and you begged me. Don't forget you promised not to laugh."

"I won't."

"The book is very… ambiguous about the particulars of what people do. When being… intimate."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's a lot of business about the lovers 'heaving with passion,' but it's unclear what exactly that involves. There isn't any explanation of who is heaving what, into what place, or when. I expect it was written for people who already know what they're meant to be heaving."

"Why is that embarrassing?"

"Because…" I couldn't believe I was actually confessing something so humiliating, out loud, to another person. I closed my eyes. "… I didn't know until my first time with Britt that people do it face to face. Not like horses or sheep or other animals."

There was a long silence during which she did a bit of her own heaving, but dutifully did not laugh. "Does Britt know that?" she asked finally.

"No! I was _so_ grateful I figured it out quick. I was lying on my back, on his bed, and he was on top of me and we were kissing. I was a bit confused how we were supposed to get around to the actual main event, so I was letting him take the lead. Then…" I paused. "Oh, my _gods_ , this is embarrassing. I'll never, ever forget what he said." I imitated Britt's teasing tone. "'Os, we can reinvent the act if that's your aim, but customarily the lady's knees aren't touching.' I realized my mistake all at once, and I was _mortified_ that I hadn't understood before. I think he just put it down to nervousness. At least, I hope so. I don't ever want him to find out what an ignorant little twit I was."

"You weren't really, though. It _is_ a funny story, but how were you supposed to know?"

"I don't know, Jess, it seems _really_ obvious now. Did _you_ know that before this?"

"…nooo. But I'm very, very grateful that I won't have to follow in your shameful footsteps."

I kicked her under the covers.

"Ow."

"Do you feel better now?" I asked, combing my fingers through her hair.

"A little. Do you?"

"I don't know. A little."

"I don't want to stop talking."

"I don't either."

"Can I ask you something rude? You don't have to answer if it hurts your feelings."

"That's not a very auspicious start." I fluffed her hair. "You can ask."

"In the story. The outlaw's mother was a ruined woman with no prospects. That means marriage prospects, right?"

"Yes."

"So…" She seemed to be deciding how to word her question. "How come _you're_ not a ruined woman with no prospects? You told Father you were having a baby and he barely seemed to care."

"I think it's that Lord Dunleavy wants an heir enough that he isn't too picky. He wants someone highborn, and young enough to have children, and I guess he doesn't care about much more. And… maybe a confirmation I'm not barren makes me better for their purposes."

Jessa pressed her face hard into my shoulder.

"I know. I know, baby." I nuzzled my head against hers and took a deep breath. "Believe it or not, I'd rather let you embarrass me with more sex questions than talk about my potential paths to ruined womanhood."

She was quiet for long enough that I started to think she was asleep.

"What does it feel like?" she asked finally.

"What does what feel like?"

"Being with a boy. Is it true he puts his—"

"—oh. Yes, it's true—"

"—but it goes in your—"

"— _yes_ —"

"—but doesn't that hurt? It seems like it would hurt."

"It's… complicated. It might, if she isn't ready, or if it's her first time—but—that is, he doesn't just put it—er—never mind, it's just… there are other things they can do together first to help get her ready and make it nice for her."

"So it feels good."

I was relieved she hadn't asked what things. "Yes, and even better if you like him, and he's gentle."

Jessa considered this. "And Britt is gentle with you? He's nice to you, when you do that?"

I forced myself not to cry at the question. "… yes. He is."

"That's good. But, does he move it around?"

I knew my face was beet red. "Um. Yes. The lady might do some moving as well." Our mother would happily cut the heart from my chest if she heard me corrupting my baby sister like this.

"—and _that_ feels… good?"

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. "Ah. Yes. It all does. And no, I don't want to say any more about that part."

"So…how do you know when to stop?"

"Er. That's difficult to miss."

"What do you mean? Or… is that too embarrassing to say?"

I deliberated. "Well, yes, it's partly that I'm beyond mortified by this conversation. But also, it's… a private thing. It's special, like a secret you wouldn't share with anyone else. So telling someone about it isn't easy. And, since nobody ever explained it to _me_ in words, it's hard to think of the right way to describe what I mean."

"You don't have to."

"No, I'll try. I wish someone had talked like this with me when I was your age. I think it would have spared me a lot of pointless guilt and confusion." I stroked her hair. "So, there's a part at the end that feels better than the rest. I don't know how to explain that, but it's unmistakable when it happens." I thought for a second. "It… my first time, with Britt. It was so nice for me when we finished, it made me cry. That doesn't _sound_ good, I know. But it was special. He made me feel cared about."

She considered this for a moment. "I know all this is how you get a baby. Is it from that end part?"

"Um, yes. The man has to finish his part for that. It's… they call it his seed, because it's what grows into a baby inside her." I wondered if the goddess Sune were looking down on me from somewhere, laughing at how awkward I felt saying depraved things like "seed" to my sister. "They only _call_ it that," I teased awkwardly. "As it turns out, men don't have actual seeds inside them."

"Is that another thing you didn't know until you tried it? Did you think you could crack Britt open and feed all the birds?"

"Shut up, Jessy." This time she dodged my kick, cackling quietly.

"How do you keep from getting pregnant, if you don't want to be?"

That was easier. "There are different ways. The one I used was a plant that keeps a lady from getting with child. You make it into a tea, or if you can stand the taste, chew the bark."

"Where do you get that?"

"In theory, you can get it at any herbal shop, but I was afraid Mother would find out, so I bought mine from a priestess of Sune at the spring festival."

"Haah! You bought it from the goddess of loovvve?"

"Ugh. Grow up."

She giggled.

"And… don't make fun. When you're ready one day, you should go see someone like that, too. She had helpful advice. She was the first person to ever actually talk to me about any of this without a lot of hinting around everything that was too improper or embarrassing."

"What are the other ways? To not get a baby."

"Well… I'm sure I don't know all of them. I think there are plants or herbs that men can use, too. And people can… do things differently."

"Are you going to tell me what that means, or is it too embarrassing?"

"It's… pretty embarrassing, yes." I laughed at myself. "One way is that they can stop before they get to the end part."

"Because the man has to finish, for her to get pregnant."

"Yes. But… they can also use their hands, instead. Or—" I covered my face in the dark. "Their mouths."

"Like kissing, you mean?"

"Well, sort of, yes," I hedged.

"What! You mean, Britt kissed you between your legs?" She laughed with impish glee at my humiliation.

"I'm _not_ answering that."

"Did you like it?"

"I'm not answering that either."

"That means yes. Were his whiskers scratchy—oh, _fine_ , be that way—"

"—are you _done_?"

"No. Tell me about people using their hands. Is that—"

"— _yes_ , it feels good, _no_ , it can't make a baby, _yes_ , people can do that by themselves to get to the good end part, _no_ , I'm not explaining how to do that, _no_ , doing that doesn't make a person dirty or a wanton, and _yes_ , it's good practice, and _yes_ , it'll make it easier to wait for the real thing." I cleared my throat self-consciously. "And, er, while it's not dirty or bad, as you can see it's rather awkward to discuss with others, so I recommend keeping it private if you decide to try it for yourself."

She was very quiet. _Too_ quiet, I realized with amusement. "Why, Jessa! Are _you_ embarrassed now?" I teased. "Is _that_ why your baths take so long lately?"

" _Os_ ," she complained. "Don't make fun!"

I shook with laughter and scooped her into my arms again. "Oh, gods, I love you so much, you silly boob." I tousled her hair. "You know you have nothing to be ashamed of, right?"

She nodded silently, her face buried in my shoulder.

"Good. Do you want to talk about something different?"

She nodded again.

"Do you want to see the ring Britt made me?"

Jessa raised her face. "He made your betrothal ring? _Himself_?"

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. "Yes. He's a smith, after all. It's not all just plowshares and rakes. Why don't I build up the fire again? You were right, it's cold in here." I drew the bedclothes back over her and crouched at the hearth, stirring at the fading embers with the poke until they glowed enough to ignite a fresh piece of wood.

"Where do you hide his ring at?" she asked.

"I'll show you." I rejoined her, fluffing the covers around us, and showed her my hand in the soft light of the fire.

Jessa tilted her head and looked at me, confused.

"That's what makes it so special. It hides in plain sight. I don't ever have to take it off. Here, feel." I showed her where to look.

"It's invisible? I never guessed!"

"It's a spell. Don't laugh… the magic words are silly." I hesitated, then spoke them quietly.

"Love endures," she repeated, thrilling to see the ring disappear again. "It's _not_ silly. It's beautiful." She felt for the ring on my hand again. " _Love endures_. It's so wonderful. It's better than any jewels."

I nodded, inordinately happy at her praise. "It's the best thing I own."

I let her turn my ring visible and invisible a few more times, and then we lay there in peaceful somnolence for a while, the fire warming my back, and me warming her.

"Os?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

"Thank you for telling me all the embarrassing things even though you hated it."

I gave her a squeeze. "It wasn't so bad."

"Please will you listen to me about my plan, though? It's important."

"I'll listen."

"I know you said you couldn't promise me anything," she said haltingly. "But just like your worst nightmare was that day I almost drowned… this marriage for you is mine. That life will kill you. I know it will. You might as well take poison like the gentleman outlaw's mother, if you go through with it like they want."

I rested my chin atop her tawny little head.

" _Please_. Promise me you won't marry him. No matter what. You can't. You have to find some way to get out of it, even if you don't like any of my ideas." She clutched my arm so hard it hurt. "No matter what," she repeated. "I _am_ old enough to understand the consequences to me, and I'm still asking. Because it's important."

I was silent a while, considering her plea, and whether I agreed she was old enough, and whether that even mattered because I'd always be the big sister regardless.

"Jessy," I began. "I was wrong before to treat you like a little girl—I understand that. But can you also try to understand why I can't feel all right agreeing to abandon you to a fate that was supposed to be mine?"

"Yes, I can—and listen. You won't be abandoning me to anything. The delay means I have time you don't, to plan my own escape. I have years to prepare, to save money. I don't have a Britt of my own, and Father can't use either of us as leverage against the other once one of us is gone. Better yet—Father doesn't know that I know about this. He won't be watching me like he will you."

"And…" she hesitated. "You couldn't hear her on your side of the house—but from my room, I could. Mother wept in her room for _hours_ earlier. I know she's terrible, especially to you… but if making you get married was her idea I think it would have happened a lot sooner. I think she's truly upset over all this. If he tries to do this to me too, she might find some way to rebel against him."

I closed my eyes and sighed. "All right, not all your reasoning is hopelessly flawed. It just… still feels wrong."

"Os? Please."

"All right, pet." I exhaled deeply, feeling like the worst, most cowardly, sister in all creation for agreeing to save myself at her possible expense. "All right. We'll do it your way."


	5. Blindness, Errors, and Betrayals

Jessa slept, a little, after outlining her surprisingly well-considered plan for my daring escape. I held her in the near-dark of the fading firelight, listening to her even breathing, and fighting the twinge of despair that came every time I forgot and re-remembered the uncertainty that keeping her promise invited. Marrying might mean never seeing her again. Running nearly guaranteed it.

I knew I should try to rest in preparation for whatever doubtful providence the day might bring, but true sleep was impossible. So instead I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, and in my waking moments trying to fix every detail of her in my mind. Eventually, dawn crept slow into the room on grey fingers, filtering through the frost tinging the window panes.

At some point I must have slept, for she and I both started awake at Bonnie's sharp knock on the door. "Lady Oswin?"

I tensed. The thought of talking to anyone made me queasy all over again.

"I'll get her to go away," Jessa whispered, and I nodded my weak gratitude. "Pretend to be asleep," she ordered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and I rolled to face the wall, drawing my legs up to my chest and squeezing my eyes shut against the light.

I heard the door open, and then the muffled tones of their conversation. "… so I fed her a sip of Mother's sleeping draught," Jessa explained.

"In that event I'd better come in and build up the fire, miss," Bonnie replied. "It's wretched cold and rainy today, and with the shock she's had it wouldn't do to let her take ill from the damp. My cousin lost her suckling babe and was so low with the grief of the thing that a fever carried her away. She hadn't the strength left to fight it, poor thing."

There was a pause. "Maybe we ought to let her be, Bonnie? I have her tucked in, she'll stay warm."

"Oh, she'll sleep right through. One of those draughts would put down a dire wolf. The first time your lady mother drank one I thought she'd perished in her sleep!" Bonnie came into the room, lugging the paraphernalia of her morning work. "And never you mind that talk of chills, Jessy-my-girl. I've a foolish tongue, you know that." The door closed and Bonnie lowered her voice. "How did she pass the night?"

"I…" Jessa began, and then stopped. "Not very well." I could tell she wanted to say more, and I wished I could tell her it was all right, I wouldn't be upset with her.

"Oh, my girl," Bonnie said sympathetically. "I'm not surprised to hear that. I'm sorry."

"She was sick," Jessa blurted. "When I came in, I fell over her on the floor, still dressed from dinner. She'd been sick to her stomach. She wasn't making any sense. I had to undress her and make her go to bed."

"About when was that?" Bonnie inquired.

"Late. I waited until I couldn't hear Mother crying anymore."

"Close on to midnight, must have been. Is that when you fed her the draught?"

"No. I tried giving her a slap in the face, to bring her round. Like you told me that time."

"Did that help any?"

"I don't know. She came back to herself, a little, but it took her so long to stop crying. I got a little bit of the story. She wouldn't say too much. After she quieted down I went and got the sleeping medicine. I was afraid too much might be dangerous, so I only gave her a little sip and then I put the draught back so Mother wouldn't know." She paused, expertly projecting an air of scarcely-repressed anguish. "Was I wrong, Bonnie?"

"No, girl, you weren't. It was the kindest thing for her. She'll wake again healthy enough, and doubtless be better off for having passed a dreamless night." Bonnie set to work raking up the coals.

"Er, Bonnie," Jessa began. "I wonder if you might do me a favor."

"What's that, lass?"

"Well… part of what I was able to get from her was, Father gave Os permission to go into the village, just one last time. So that she might say her goodbyes. To Britt."

Bonnie made a sound halfway between contempt and sympathy. "That's a small enough kindness. The _very_ least the poor children were owed. I'll help if I can. What is it?"

"You said it was cold and she oughtn't take a chill. She meant to go into the village today, though. I think she wants to have the worst over and done with. But her green cloak's too thin for walking in this cold. Might she borrow one of the work cloaks from the stables?" She paused. "I don't want her to be carried off by a fever." I stifled the urge to open my eyes so I could roll them at her dramatics.

"I spoke too carelessly about that, child," Bonnie said apologetically. "But you're right, the green one won't do for today. I'll ask Pog to bring in one of the men's cloaks and I'll brush it off and take it up to you. She's tall enough it shouldn't drag the ground."

Bonnie added some wood to the fire and set it crackling merrily. "If she wakes, make her stay abed if you can," she advised Jessa. "It's best she doesn't come down for any meals today. Seeing your parents may give her another turn. I'll let them know she's resting now and you're watching over her. We can hope your father will have sense to let her alone a few days, after that ugly business last night. I'll ask Cook to make her some beef tea, and you a bite of breakfast."

"Bonnie, thank you," Jessa piped.

"Truly it's the least little bit I could do. I have to walk into the village later to get some things for your mother from the herbalist. While I'm there I'll see if they haven't got something for soothing the nerves. It's best for her if we keep mistress Oswin calm and quiet for a few days."

"She's always calm and quiet."

"That's true, child, but still waters run deep, as they say. You must understand, none among us expected this turn of events, but your sister least of all." There was a short pause and Bonnie set down her pail and accoutrements. "Come here, poppet." I heard a rustle of skirts.

"Your lord father isn't a warm man," she began, "but until now he's always given her his particular favor, you understand. He taught her to read himself, you know, when she was just a little thing. Most men of his station don't even want to look at a child that isn't privy-trained yet, let alone a girl child. So you see, apart from the shock of the news itself, it must have been a hard thing, to feel she was forsaken by one who always seemed to care for her. You can imagine the kind of hurt this has dealt. She'll need time to make sense of all she has lost."

My throat was tight as I listened to Bonnie articulate in one short speech the nature of the injury I had struggled all night to understand for myself.

"Let me tell you something. When I came here, you were just born. But before that," Bonnie continued, "I worked for a family with more children than they knew what to do with, and they were a pack of vicious brats who all fought each other and vied for their parents' favor. But your sister, you understand, she's different. She looked after you from the day you were born, and herself without anyone but Cook to do the like for her. I don't know where she learnt it. What I mean to say is, I don't believe that girl cares more for anyone in this world than you." She stopped, as if considering her next words carefully. "Lady Oswin has your father's temperament. It's not easy for her, like it is for you or me, talking to people. And words are what best ease suffering like this. When she's ready, I don't expect there's anyone else she will talk to but you. So you see, you _can_ help her. Even though it doesn't feel that way now."

Jessa sniffed loudly, and Bonnie cleared her throat. "I'd best be off—your lady mother will be wanting her headache remedy this morning. I'll be back in a trice with the beef tea." She sighed. "This is all a dreadful sad business, and no mistake. But don't wound mistress Oswin's pride by being sorry for her. I know your heart is wrenched with pity, same as mine, but it won't do her any good to see that."

"All right," Jessa said gruffly.

"Things will settle down again, pet. You'll see. It won't be the same, but there will be a new sort of usual and you'll get used to it."

I scrubbed at my stinging eyes with the back of one hand as soon as Bonnie picked up her things and left.

"Well," my sister said awkwardly after the door closed, "you know how Bonnie does go on." She lingered there for a second, then leaned forward onto the bed. "Os? Are you all right?"

I cleared my throat and sat up, combing my fingers through my tangled hair. I swiped my fingers under my eyes before I turned to face her. "Uh, yes. Fine. Pass me my brush, will you? On second thought, never mind, I'm getting up, so don't bother."

"Did I… say too much?"

"No." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and moved to the seat on the cushioned chair in front of my bedstand. Picking the brush up, I worked it through the first section of my hair. "I know better than to go to bed without braiding this mess up out of the way." I set the brush down, jammed a couple of hairpins in my mouth, and began plaiting the section I had combed out.

"Os."

"Mm."

"You don't have to pretend for me."

"Not for you, no." I dropped the beginning of my braid. "For me." I spat the pins into my hand and dropped them on the table, then took the brush up again and began picking hair from it to give me something to look at that wasn't her. "Today… I swim, or I drown." I gave her a tight smile. "I admit, I'm a coward. I would much rather stay here with you."

"You can't." Her voice was flat.

I nodded curtly. "I thought you might say that. So, if you want me to carry on like we agreed, I can't afford much sentiment. I have to act some sort of usual today, and I already look a mess. When it's time for me to cry for this—and believe me, it will take a long time to shed enough tears to grieve the loss of a person like you from my life—" I choked and stopped to get myself back under control. "When it's time," I resumed, "well, that can't be now, is all I mean."

Jessa pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded.

"Nobody who sees us today can suspect this is the last anything. I'm wrangling my hair, like I do every day, and as far as they are concerned—like I will every day until my… wedding and each day thereafter."

I set the brush back down. "Come here." I slapped my thighs. "Up. Like old times."

Her mouth twitched. "I'm too big."

"Nonsense. You might be a bathtub deviant—"

"—shut up—" She grinned despite herself.

"—but you'll always be my baby. Besides, you've heard Mother. You'll never outgrow a great galloping monster like me."

Jessa clambered onto my lap and let me hold her there. "Listen," I whispered. "Bonnie wasn't so far from the mark. I can't talk about any of that now because it's a deep, dark hole I won't be able to climb back out of. But just because I won't be here doesn't mean that you haven't taken care of me. I wouldn't have the guts for any of this if not for you."

She whimpered and buried her face in my chest. I coughed to banish the miserable pang it gave me. "I love you, baby. But no tears. You know what an ugly cry face I have. Be strong for me. Just for today. After today we can both cry all we want."

She nodded into my shoulder, hiding her face. I rocked her and pretended not to see. "So, let's talk about what happens if I get away."

"Not _if_ ," she protested hoarsely. " _When_."

I swiped my hand under my eyes. "All right. _When_ I make it, it will take me some time. Father has too much invested in me. He won't stop looking. For a while."

"Will I ever see you again?"

"Yes," I promised, though I suspected I was lying to her. "One day." I kissed the top of her head. "Do you remember our cousin Cosima? She's about my age."

"From—from Waterdeep? On Mother's side. Her sister. Aunt Tedra?"

"Yes. Well, I don't know if you knew, but Cosima is terribly lonely. You remember she married that textile merchant? Her husband is a good man, but he's busy all the time, and of course she's always been so shy. They're always going to new places, and it's all very exciting, but she's so slow to make friends. So, what do you think she might do?"

Jessa shook her head. "What?"

"She might decide to find herself a pen friend. And her dear cousin Jessa was such a delight when she visited that summer, even though she was just a girl of ten. Yes, that sweet girl might make a lovely pen friend. Maybe that girl would even benefit from the occasional scrap of womanly advice."

"So, one day, I expect you will get a letter from your cousin Cosima. Your mother and father won't think too much of it—but when you get that letter, what will you know?"

"That you're safe?" she whispered.

"That's right."

"But what if you can't tell me anything true about your life? Because of Mother and Father."

"It doesn't matter. You can still write cousin Cosima and tell her anything you want about yourself. Her husband travels all over, and they don't have any children yet, so she often goes with him. There's no telling where her letters might come from. And, you don't know. She may meet some interesting people in her travels. Maybe she'll tell you what they're doing with their lives." I kissed her head again.

"What was that business about my green cloak?"

"Oh. I thought, if Father misses you and sends someone looking for you, wouldn't they look for a lady in a green cloak? Not a stable groom's cloak."

"Ah." I stroked her hair. "That was clever."

"Was it?"

"Well, _I_ certainly didn't think of it. That's something you should remember—you are much cleverer than people give you credit for. I expect it's because you're so pretty. But that's a good thing. People are easier to outsmart if they underestimate you."

Jessa lay her head on my shoulder. "Os. I wish I had something to give you." Her voice caught. "To remember me. Something really special." Her hand clutched my arm so tight it hurt.

I squeezed my eyes shut and messed her hair. "If you were trying to be forgettable you should have done a _lot_ less farting under the blankets when you were little."

" _Os_! I'm trying to be nice here. You _know_ milk made my stomach sick."

"I _said_ no sentimentality. It's on you if you mistook what that meant—oww! You little tit-pinching brat!" I stood, scooping her thrashing body up in my arms, and threw her on the bed before jumping on her.

Jessa cackled maniacally and rolled away from me on the bed. "I know your weakness… your bosoms!"

"Shut up, dummy!" I wrapped both arms around her and pinned her there, squirming like a fish. "Yield!"

"Never, hag!" She kicked furiously until I managed to pin her legs with mine.

We lay there a moment, breathing heavily from our tussle. "Jess."

"What?"

"Give in or I squeeze you until you _do_ fart."

"No—" She struggled fruitlessly against my iron grip, then went limp in my arms. " _Fine_."

I released her. "What do you want to do the rest of the morning? Before… well, before."

She was somber a moment, then seemed to recall my instructions to keep her chin up. "Remember that Midwinter's Eve when we stayed up so I could find out if it was really fey folk who put up the garlands, or just Cook?"

"The year you were six. But we fell asleep."

"And in the morning they let us have our breakfast in your bed instead of downstairs, and you read to me from Anne of Green Manor. You always did the voices just right."

"Is that what you want?"

"Will you read the part where Diana gets drunk on currant wine?"

"If you want. But that part always makes me remember the time—"

"-when we got drunk on brandy we took from the kitchen?"

"Yes. That."

"Let's not do that today."

"Well, of course not, I need to be functional sooner than two days from now."

" _Talk_ about farting," Jessa complained.

"Shut up and go get the book, brat. Will you comb out my hair for me while I read?"

—∞—∞—∞—

A heaviness settled in my chest as I trudged into the village by myself through the early afternoon drizzle. Some eighteen hours had passed since dinner, and as surreal as the events of last night were, my current undertaking was even further beyond reckoning. I'd never been more afraid of a conversation than the one I was about to have with Britt.

More than anything, I wanted to turn back, go home, and lie in bed until I either died or woke up from this dream. The only thing stopping me at present was the certain knowledge that I'd never be able to live down Jessa's disappointment at my cowardice.

So my feet moved forward, even as they numbed with the cold.

I had a tiny window of time remaining in which I could still change my mind with no one but Jessa the wiser. It was still an option, if I reconciled myself to her grief and the probability that she would, deep down, never truly be able to forgive me.

I'd avoided Father as I left the house, taking the servants' stairs and slipping out the kitchen door, so he wouldn't know for certain later what time I'd left. I wondered how long Father thought this sort of goodbye ought to take—how long I had before he'd realize I was gone. No doubt he thought a quick handshake and a sincere salutation thanking Britt for some fond times shared would suffice.

An hour, maybe. After that, assuming I wasn't caught and hauled back a prisoner, I would never be welcome at home again as long as Father lived.

Probably Mother, too.

It was far too cold for how long I stood on the smithy step, hand on the door pull, unable to work up the courage to go in. When I finally did, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window glass, my face ruddy with the cold, small, and afraid. I turned the handle and pulled the door open.

Britt faced away from me, standing at his work bench with a hammer and tongs. Small relief—his father was nowhere in sight.

Warmth from the shop and the forge enveloped me as I closed the door. Britt half turned at the sound of the bell, and his expression when he spied me was one of such marked relief that I felt my tension ease a bit. I opened my mouth, then realized I didn't know what to say.

"Os. When I didn't see you yesterday I was afraid you'd decided not to come…" He trailed off, his voice hoarse. He coughed into his fist and took a step toward me.

"They didn't tell me anything until dinner." My voice came out a whisper.

"Lock the door. Turn the sign."

My eyes stung at the memory of all the times those words had been spoken in a much happier context. I turned to bolt the door and stood facing it, trying to compose myself.

"I'm—" I began as I turned, but he already had both arms around me, crushing me to his chest. I sniffed and slipped my arms around his middle. " _Please_ don't hate me for not talking to Father sooner. You were right. I'm sorry. I love you."

"It's all right," he murmured.

I choked back a sob. "It's not."

"It will be." He tipped my chin up for a kiss.

"Britt—" I meant to object, on the basis that I needed to know just what made him think things were going to be all right, but he was distracting me from all that. His hands tightened around my waist, quickening my pulse. I broke our kiss. "We have to—" I had to leave off mid-sentence to keep from crying.

He pulled me back in. "I know, Mouse." He reached for the clasp on my cloak and slipped it from my shoulders, hanging it on a hook by the wall. He reached for the front of my dress.

"We can't, not now, here—your father—"

"Dad's abed. He wasn't feeling well this morning."

"We—but—we—"

He was already undoing my laces. "No buts." He made quick work of them and I sucked my breath in as he expertly popped my breasts out of their confinement.

"Shouldn't we—" He bent his head and took one of my nipples in his teeth. "Oh, Gods, stop that… first shouldn't we discuss—"

I felt his hand slip uselessly up my leg, thwarted by the extra layers of clothing I'd worn for warmth, and changed my mind. "—oh, hell with it. Let's go up to the loft and do this right."

—∞—∞—∞—

[EXCITING M+ RATING THINGS OFFSCREEN]

—∞—∞—∞—

I settled into the crook of Britt's arm, still panting, and curled against him. "I really needed that," he sighed, using his free hand to stroke my hair.

"Me too," I tried to say, but reality was quickly crowding back in on me. I couldn't raise my voice above a whisper. I choked on my words and began to cry before I knew what was happening.

"Os?" Britt looked down at me in surprise, then turned and gathered me against him. "Hey, hey, shhh. You're all right."

Him being so nice made it impossible to get myself under control. I'd cried in front of him before, but those had been the easy tears of a girl in love, touched by some kind gesture of his. They didn't require consolation.

There was nothing sweet or tender about this. These were gruesome, wracking sobs, which betrayed me as the pitiful, terrified little wretch I was. Britt's face was a mask of stunned disconcertment at the fountain of ugly misery boiling through me. He was so out of his depth it wasn't even funny. I clutched at his arm, knowing my nails must be digging painfully into his skin, but unable to stop myself, and equally unable to stop bawling my ragged despair into his chest.

He quickly gave up trying to comfort me with words and wrapped me in his arms, rocking me, murmuring my name, holding me tight against him. When I finally quieted, it wasn't so much because I was done crying, but more so that I had begun to cough from the exertion of my grief and physically couldn't carry on any longer.

Britt reached for the wine skin he kept up here for us and fumbled to uncork it while I choked on my dry throat. I took a sip and handed it back. I leaned my head hard into him as I felt myself starting to shake again. "No, no," Britt said quickly. "Let's not start that over. More wine." He pressed the skin back into my hands and I took a few dutiful swallows. "Feel better?"

I shook my head no. I didn't trust my voice yet.

"Are you scared, is that it?"

I nodded, but there wasn't much spirit in it. Scared wasn't the half of it.

"I have to talk to you about something," I whispered. "I don't have a lot of time before Father comes looking for me."

"You don't have to be afraid, Mouse. I understand why you are, but everything's going to be all right. I promise. I have a plan for us." Britt pushed a messy piece of hair away from my face and looked earnestly at me.

"You do?" I felt a little tendril of hope snake round my heart. Maybe it really would be all right, just like Jessa said.

He kissed the top of my head. "In a little while, when you're feeling better, we'll get dressed. I'll get a few things together and we'll go today." He reached for my hand and felt for my ring. "Good, you have it. I hoped we'd be able to do this on a pretty day, but then, any day with you in it is pretty to me."

I went limp with relief. "Oh, gods, Britt, you'll really go with me? Just like that? I was so afraid you wouldn't want—"

He squeezed my hand, hard. "—Yes. We'll go find Thalia now. Once we're married there isn't a lot your father can do about it. He's lord here, all right, but he can't unmarry two people willingly united."

My heart fell.

Britt gave me a wicked little grin. "If we get you with child quick enough, that goes doubly so."

My face must have followed it, because he hastened to go on. "I know it's not ideal, probably not romantic like you imagined, but it'll take care of things all the same."

"No, it's not that." I took another drink of wine and wet my lips, trying to think how to explain my father's threats. "I had a plan too," I began. "It's like yours. But mine was to go somewhere else to be married."

"Somewhere else?" He frowned. "Is that what you meant when you said go with you?"

"Yes, but where doesn't matter. Just, someplace nobody knows us." I took his large hand in both of my mine and willed him to understand. "If we go far enough, you're right, my father really won't be able to stop us."

"Someplace nobody knows us," he repeated, his expression blank.

"Where my father can't find us."

"Are you embarrassed for people here… for people of your status to know you're a smith's wife?" He pulled his hand away, looking hurt. I felt awful for having described my idea so poorly.

"No!" I hurried to explain. "I would _never_ be embarrassed by you! I _love_ what you do. My father—he…" I fought back my tears. "I don't know, exactly. He was like a different person last night. He's in some kind of money trouble, and this marriage contract is supposed to solve that. I told Father I would go marry you last night, if _that's_ what it took to show him." I started to cry again. "And… he said he… would widow me in the morning if I did."

I wiped my eyes. "That's why—"

"— _Oswin_ ," Britt said placatingly. "Fathers have been threatening to kill their daughters' sweethearts since time immemorial."

"No, you don't understand, my father—"

"—will have to accept our decision."

"Britt, no, he was _serious_. He said—he said he'd see you hanged. I think he truly meant it. Please. If we—"

His tone was patient. "Os. Stop exaggerating. It's not like you to be so dramatic."

My terror at his disbelief set me babbling. "I'm not, I promise I'm not, I just—last night really frightened me. I think Father will do anything to make this contract work. He wasn't just threatening—I—"

He cut me off. "—I understand that running away must sound like an adventure to you—"

"—no, it doesn't! It sounds terrifying! Why do you think I couldn't stop crying before—"

"—I have a life here. _You_ have a life here." I'd never known Britt to lose his patience with anyone. But he was losing it with me now.

"Except, I don't anymore," I pleaded. "If you'll just listen to me, you'll see this is the way. The things Father said—"

"—in this fantasy of yours, what exactly do you see us doing?"

"You have a trade already," I rushed to explain, "and I can learn one myself. Until then I can do bookkeeping for someone, I know all about that, and I more or less know how to run a household, or an estate. Working for a merchant couldn't be that far off. I can be useful, I know I can."

"I thought you said your father has money troubles."

I twisted to look at him, confused.

"So is anything he taught you really all that valuable, in light of where it got him?"

That hurt.

"I think it would be," I said in a small voice, trying to sound less wounded than I felt. I climbed out of his lap and sat kneeling on the floor, hoping my words would have impact if I could look right into his face. "I—"

"—And in this grand scheme, what do I do? I'm still a smith, am I?"

"Yes! If you want to be, I mean, but you can do anything you want, that part doesn't matter to me."

"It matters to me. I'm not about to go work for someone else like some nobody when my dad and I have everything we need right here."

"But I thought of that," I said eagerly, "and you'll have your own shop, just like here! I brought some money—so we can make our new start. I'll keep our accounts and—"

"—Money you… what? Stole from your father? Is that the same father with the money troubles? Keep your story straight, now."

Britt sounded a lot less friendly than he had when he said everything would be all right.

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out.

"Be honest with me, Oswin." The coldness with which he spoke my name scared me. "Did you cook up this nonsense about running away because you thought it would be a good way to make me change my mind about marrying you? So you could go marry your rich lord with a clean conscience?"

I couldn't believe my ears. "No," I gasped, "how could you think that? After what we just—" I motioned helplessly at all our discarded clothing. "I would rather die than marry that man. I love _you_. I want to be with _you_."

He didn't answer. Not to argue, not to reciprocate, not to take anything back.

I was starting to panic. " _Only_ you. _Always_ you. Please, Britt," I begged. "I'll do anything else you want. Anything. I just can't stay here, that's all."

"Staying is the only 'anything else' I'm interested in, is the problem."

"What if—" I cast about desperately for another idea. "What if I go, on my own, and find a place for us. That can work! I'll send word when I'm ready, that'll give you time to wrap up everything here. I'll be safe from Father, and I'll hate having to be apart from you, but—"

"—stop."

"But listen, I'll find steady work, and we'll—"

"— _stop it_."

Was there another, better way to beseech him not to break my heart?

"We are not running away together," Britt said firmly. "That is a ridiculous notion."

I swallowed hard. "I know it is, but please consider it anyway. I… I don't want to live without you." My voice came out pitifully small, and now that he was angry, I was afraid he might think I was playacting to manipulate him. I cleared my throat, trying to sound less childish. "This conversation obviously took a wrong turn somewhere. And I was scared, I wasn't explaining myself very well. Let's start over and—"

"—This whole relationship obviously took a wrong turn somewhere, if you know me so little that you think further explanation will make any part of this idea sound reasonable or desirable to me."

He might as well have slapped me in the face, I was so shocked.

The silence between us stretched on and on in the horrendous echo of those terrible words.

"If I—" I said in a strangled voice, then left off so I could clear my throat again. "If I were to… write to you. After I got settled. Maybe you would feel diff—" I cut myself off.

Britt's face was like stone.

"Do you want—"

"I told you what I want. And you rejected it."

"Not the getting married part," I faltered.

"And what are you even talking about, writing me after you get settled? Get settled _where_ , exactly?"

"I don't know yet. I thought maybe… before I knew you didn't like the idea… we would decide that together. But that's fine! I don't mind! I can figure it out."

"Grow the hell up, Oswin." I flinched at the steel in his voice. "You're a sheltered little rich girl, even if you do muck about with common people like me. If you think running away from home, alone, on foot, in the middle of winter, is going to get you anywhere but dead, maybe you really do need to be married off to some rich prat who will handle all the thinking for you."

"That's why I dressed warmly," I said blankly. Then, because I evidently was every bit the idiot he said I was, I asked the question with the most obvious answer of all. "Britt?" I whispered. "Are you… breaking it off with me?"

The disgusted look on his face told me all I needed to know.

I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, trying to keep from crying as I reached for my underclothes with as much composure as I could manage. Britt turned away from me and dressed in flinty silence.

Because I'd worn so many layers, and because my hands were shaking so badly, getting dressed took me an excruciatingly long time. He waited, his back politely turned. This, more than anything, made me understand that he wanted nothing to do with me now. Because Britt was a nice man, he wouldn't look at a lady who wasn't his and wasn't fully dressed.

I was so painfully aware of his palpable irritation at how long I was taking that I felt myself on the verge of hysteria. I tasted blood where I'd bitten my cheek, and bore down harder on it to keep myself collected until I could flee.

"Do us both a favor, will you?" Britt said when I finally finished lacing and tying my boots, some time later.

It made me sad, how _tired_ he sounded. I was tired, too. I wished he would change his mind so we could comfort each other and figure out what to do next, together.

But all I could do was look at him.

"Don't do anything stupid and desperate, all right? Go home. Marry your lord. Live your life. Forget about all this business with me. I'm sorry I was mean. You've done nothing wrong. This is what girls like you are supposed to do. It's on me that I was fool enough to think otherwise."

He didn't even sound angry anymore, but this was the most devastating thing he had said yet.

I could think of no response, so I knelt, picking up the wineskin from the floor. I needed something to wash away the blood I'd just swallowed. I wet my lips and thought carefully about what to say next. "Um. I need to take this." The raw inside of my cheek throbbed. "With me," I clarified.

He simply stared at me, then nodded curtly. After a long, confused moment I realized he was waiting for me to leave. Oh.

I avoided looking up at Britt as I climbed down, feeling for each rung and making sure of my footing before I put my weight on it. I would sooner die than fall and make him have to feel responsible for seeing if I was all right.

I hesitated at the bottom, then realized he wasn't following me down. He wasn't going to walk me to the door, as I'd thought he might. So I turned shakily, keeping my eyes on the floor until I reached the wall hooks where my cloak was waiting. I wanted badly to look up at him in the hopes he'd changed his mind and would undo all this bewilderment, but the past day had taught me that expectations were best kept limited. Cloak around me, I opened the door, stepped outside, and closed it before too much of the cold could rush inside.


	6. Here at the End of All Things

I marched away from the smithy, as resolutely as I could manage, toward the opposite end of the village. In truth, I had no idea where I was going, but I needed to feel less rudderless, so walking with false purpose seemed better than walking with no purpose at all.

Some sixth sense bade me look around, and without really knowing why, I looked behind me and saw two of my father's stablemen—Harris and Lon, their names were—walking up to the smithy. I nearly broke into a frantic run before I remembered that my unremarkable grey cloak made me unrecognizable from this distance. I made myself walk at a normal pace to the nearest shop, which was the herbalist's shop.

"Lady Oswin! To what do I owe this rare pleasure, on such a dreary day?" Greta set down her pestle as I pushed the door open and shoved the bowl aside, smiling as if she were the last person alive genuinely glad to see my face. She brushed her hands off on her pinafore and stood smartly behind the counter.

I cleared my throat and summoned a smile and an excuse. "I—ah—thought I'd save Bonnie the trip in today. She was going to get some things for Mother."

"Certainly. What do you need?"

"Sleeping draughts," I heard myself say.

"The usual week supply?"

"Two, I think," I said smoothly, still wondering where my words were coming from. "I'll save Bonnie the muddy slog next week, if the weather doesn't turn better." I clasped my hands together so she wouldn't see them shaking, only narrowly resisting the urge to look out the window to see if anyone had yet thought to look in here for me.

"That's wise," she agreed. "The almanac calls for record cold all through next week. Tonight is to be the coldest of the year. Last time it was like this, half the aurochs in the county froze where they stood afield!"

I could still go home, even now, using my errand as an excuse. Maybe Britt was right, and that was what girls like me were meant to do. But I'd be kept under lock and key until my wedding. And the way Jessa would look at me…

"How is miss Jessa?" Greta inquired.

"Very well, thank you." I felt I should say something else, but didn't know what to add. No one at our house was at all well, in truth, but Mother had taught me young that admission of infirmity was evidence of poor breeding. I smiled blandly.

It occurred to me that having walked into her shop clutching a wineskin probably looked a bit odd.

"So glad to hear that," Greta said pleasantly as she took several bottles from the shelves behind the counter. I watched her line them up neatly and take out a measuring glass.

Maybe she hadn't noticed.

The nearest village to us was ten miles, more if I avoided the roads. It was a crippling distance to travel in the cold on foot, and I'd have to contend with brush and Gods-only-knew what kind of terrain. But there would be an inn at the end of that journey. It might be possible.

Or, I might freeze to death in the woods before I got halfway there. Or happen upon a wolf, or goblins. Or worse, orcs. I'd heard those stories, and they only ended well for the orcs.

Failing those extremities, the men my parents sent might well correctly assume that a privileged runaway with no practical skills to speak of would try to put herself up at an inn to pass the coldest night of the year. And their horses would take them fast enough that any lead I had wouldn't matter. I could go through hell to get there, and in the end be marched home a prisoner all the same.

There was another village fifteen miles the other way, but if I knew my Father he wouldn't take any chances. Once he decided for sure I was gone, he'd send someone every which way, just in case.

"What an exceptional young lady she's becoming," Greta continued. She took two glass bottles from the shelf and set them on the counter.

Was it insane, I wondered, that I still wanted to leave here, walk home, let myself in the kitchen door, and pester Cook to tell me a story while I peeled potatoes for her? What a relief it would be, not to make any more decisions today.

I wasn't eager to meet Dunleavy, but wedding him would mean getting out from my parents' thumb. I was far from the first woman to be packed off to marry someone twice her age, and it seemed people had a way of getting along despite their situations. I surely would as well. Jessa was being dramatic when she said I'd die there.

"Er, yes, thank you. She truly is," I said blandly, knowing I'd waited too long to answer, and barely able to care how that must look.

I thought about having to look my sister in the eye and admit I'd returned to accept my lot because Britt made me realize I was too much a coward to walk into the woods by myself in the cold and keep going until I escaped or died trying. Would she think that was better, or worse, than drinking enough sleeping draught to fell twenty dire wolves? Better to perish on my own terms, or to live as a caged bird?

"Well, she had a good teacher." Greta looked up at me and smiled warmly before carefully measuring each liquid into the bottles. "I can't think of any finer example for a girl to look up to."

I stood there a while before realizing belatedly she'd paid me a compliment. I looked up and gave her what I hoped was a modest, appreciative smile.

"Well, I won't keep you," Greta said as she wrapped the two bottles up in some scrap cloth to keep them from bumping against each other. She eyed me, likely noting that I hadn't come prepared to do shopping. "Have you need of a basket? I'll gladly lend you one."

"Ah, that would be lovely. I'm afraid I'm a bit distracted today!" I made myself laugh self-effacingly.

"Not to worry, dear. Anything else I can provide? Digestives or the like?" She looked at me with an expression of mild concern. She probably thought I was working on a fever. I must look terrible, with as little as I'd slept in the past day, and as many tears as I'd shed. I hadn't exactly kept up with our conversation, either.

"Thank you, no." I fumbled with the purse on my belt and paid her for the sleeping draughts, scarcely believing my own nerve.

"All right… well, I'm going to send you home with some of these sweets I made yesterday—I seem to remember you and Miss Jessa like lemon flavor." She smiled sympathetically at me, as if whatever were troubling me could be solved with her confections, and scooped a generous heap of the candies onto a piece of paper. "Be safe going home, dear," she said, folding it up and tucking the packet into the basket. "Best go before the snow starts."

No one was out. So I twisted my scarf around my head for warmth, pushed the door open, and strode out into the late afternoon sleet, as unconcernedly as I could manage. I needed to organize my thoughts and decide what to do next.

But I wasn't halfway to the village square when the smithy shop bell clanged and my father's men stepped out, talking loudly as they walked purposefully toward the village center. They must have been there the entire time I'd been with Greta, perhaps trying to find out from Britt where I might have gone.

The clammy discomfort of chilly fear-sweat was already dampening my undershirt, clinging unpleasantly beneath my winter layers, but I forced myself to keep walking, as if nothing were unusual, as if the two men approaching the square weren't hunters, and I weren't a petrified hind. I tried to imagine how a regular village girl might look, running an errand in the bitter cold of mid-afternoon, and hugged my arms to myself, ducking my scarfed head down against the wind.

My father's men, I reminded myself, were looking for a girl in a green cloak, a girl unsure of her next move, a girl who looked every bit the fugitive she was. Not for a girl in rough homespun wool, too big for her, simply trying to keep warm on her way back home from running errands. Not for me.

I wondered what Britt had told them.

I wondered whether he thought it strange that someone had come looking for me.

When they recognized me, would they try to appeal to my sense of reason? Or simply overpower me? Would I go quietly, or would I scream? Might I have time to down my sleeping draughts before they could haul me back to Father?

I slouched as much as I could as they came near, trying to hide my full height, and when they passed within a few feet of me, I gave a polite, if curt, little nod under my hood.

"Afternoon, miss," Harris said absently, and kept walking.

I managed to stay upright, even as my limbs threatened to buckle from the magnitude of my relief. However, I had _no_ idea what to do now, or where to go.

Ahead of me was the copse of evergreen trees that graced the town square. It was a stupid place to hide… except that if anyone thought I'd run away, they might well expect me to actually _run_. I chanced a glance behind me. Backs to me, they'd kept walking, paying me no mind at all.

Well, it would be a place to sit and think for a minute. Before I could think too hard about it and change my mind, I moved quickly to the thicket of evergreens in the town center and, feeling like a child playing at hide-and-seek, squeezed between the branches into the middle of the largest tree.

Dropping to the ground, I leaned back against its trunk, hands round my knees, pulling my cloak tight around me before I dared to peer through the branches to see what sort of attention I'd attracted.

None, to my surprise.

I looked around me. At least the thickly needled branches kept the wind out, and most of the sleet. I exhaled shakily, breathing out my remaining fear of discovery, resting my head on my arms as I took fresh stock of my situation.

I hadn't wanted to hear Britt's brutal appraisal of my odds for survival. But he was right, of course. I didn't know anything about getting along in the outdoors, in winter doubly so. I had no supplies, no opportunity to acquire any here before my parents caught up to me, and most critically, no allies now that he wanted nothing to do with me. For me alone, it would be a die-trying kind of outcome. For me alone, it was inns, or nothing. Or just… _nothing_.

It must have been an hour or more I sat, unwilling or unable to move or act, drowsing in the brutal chill until dark loomed near. Because I had never before given serious thought to what it might be like to die, I used the time to think as pragmatically and dispassionately as I could about the course I was considering. Most heroines in the novels I'd read didn't think past the terminus of their own unhappiness, or if they did it was only to consider how best to use their final act to punish someone who had dealt them a grievous wrong.

But I had Jessa to think about. And since it seemed somehow _more_ depressing to let Father make even my very death a reaction to him, staging some scene contrived to evoke pity felt as pathetic as it did distasteful and manipulative. Apart from that, the person hurt most by such a tableau would be my sister.

The very easiest thing, requiring minimum effort or thought, would be to down both bottles here where I sat, wait the half hour or so before they took effect, and make myself as comfortable as possible. I was well enough hidden from passersby—it would be some time before anyone found me, perhaps days if the weather stayed bad. They would know my self-destruction for what it was, because of the empty bottles, but maybe that didn't matter. I expected death might place me beyond such vanity.

The simplicity and effortlessness of staying here had undeniable appeal. It would mean being able to stop, right away, thinking about Britt and reliving the shocked desolation that came with each fresh remembrance that we were now separate beings—no longer a partnership, no longer confidants, no longer each other's solace. I could stop reviewing every miserable detail of our disagreement and debating whether any of it could have been salvaged had I done something differently. No more would I recall his disgusted countenance as he waited impatiently for me to leave. It wouldn't matter anymore how utterly, inescapably alone I felt without him.

Perhaps a still greater relief: I wouldn't have to make any more _decisions_.

But was it important, I wondered, for Jessa to think I hadn't done this to myself? If my body froze—and wasn't _that_ a surreal thing, to think about what might happen to my mortal form after I perished—then it might not be evident whether I was carried off by poison or by the cold. Or would she suspect, even if I threw the bottles away, that I wouldn't have curled up under a tree and waited to freeze to death unless it was by design?

It struck me with faint surprise that I hadn't yet thought about how Britt might feel if— _when_ —he learned what I had done after our final parting. I wasn't doing this because of him, or at least not entirely because of him, but he might feel responsible all the same. And maybe he was, a little, but to live out the remainder of his life under the specter of my death and the role he had played… that would be a terrible thing.

Britt's love for me might not have been reckless enough to throw away his whole life here, as I had foolishly hoped, but I thought he _had_ loved me. To a point, at least. I hadn't been reasonable to expect so much of him. Moreover, I'd sprung it on him with such haste and desperation. It wasn't his fault I couldn't go on my own, and Britt wasn't truly to blame for the way things had worked out. I still cared enough for him to spare him that guilt, if I could.

It would be kindest to him and Jessa both, I decided, if I simply disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. That would permit them the fantasy that I'd escaped. If I made it far enough into the woods, but away from any town or village where my parents might search for me, animals would take care of the rest. _That_ was as odd a thought as evaluating whether freezing might disguise my true cause of death.

But… I'd promised my sister a letter. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from crying. Jessa wasn't stupid. If she heard nothing from me, she mightn't know how it happened, but she would know all the same that I was dead. How long it might take her to give up hope, I couldn't guess, but she would, eventually. What would it be like for her to live with that miserable uncertainty?

I allowed myself a moment of overwhelming self-pitying outrage at the fact that even _this_ , the last thing I planned ever to do, would prove so difficult. Then I pulled the cork from Britt's wineskin, drained it, tossed the thing aside, and wiped my eyes carefully with my cold, gloved hands. I needed to think.

Jessa must believe, or at least be able to convince herself, that I was alive somewhere far away, living a free life. Even if she got only one letter from me, that might be enough. I might even tell her in that letter that I had to go further than I'd hoped, and that I might not be able to write again. For a letter, though, I would need paper and ink. I would also need a way to get it to her sometime after my disappearance, but I'd think of something for that.

I fixed my eyes on the dry goods store across the square, windows dark. Caster was one of the merchants in our small town who didn't live above his shop. If he was closed early because of the weather, I could get inside and find the things I needed for Jessa's letter, and it would shelter me from the wind and cold long enough to figure out my next move. No one would disturb me there, probably until tomorrow.

I sniffed my tears away and swiped at my eyes again, glad to have settled on my immediate course. One hand on Greta's basket, I willed energy into my frigid legs, preparing to stand. Then I heard a familiar voice carried toward me on the shifting wind. "…I don't think she…" Bonnie's voice became indistinct again while I strained to listen. "…set eyes on the girl soon enough …" I caught after a moment. "…stop in here for her ladyship." She broke stride with Jinson, who worked in the stables but who wasn't one of Father's particular favorites.

I was sure they couldn't see me through all the brush, but I shrank back all the same as Bonnie pushed open the door to the herbalist's shop. Jinson waited, patiently, and I waited, horrified. I hadn't even stopped to contemplate what might happen when Bonnie went on her errand and learned I'd been in already, ostensibly on her behalf, and bought enough sleeping draught to kill myself ten times over.

This wasn't going to be good.

Not a minute had passed before Bonnie burst out of the shop, crying out in frantic alarm. Jinson startled and turned to her, consternation plain on his face. I could only make out fragments of their conversation. "…find the poor lass before she…"

"…if his lordship…the girl might…"

"…won't let that…might have gone?…"

"…with young Britt…do you think…should tell someone what she…"

Bonnie shook her head vigorously. "…her father…find her ourselves."

Jinson was overtaken by a fit of coughing, and Bonnie turned to him in concern. "…should go back, this cold…"

It was a small comfort that Bonnie cared enough to try to find and stop me before my father could learn what I was up to, but I was aware of no means she might have to help me escape. And now that she had cause to guess my plans, I couldn't risk running into her at all.

I stretched my legs out carefully, knowing I had to be ready to move when it was time, and hoping the streets stayed empty.

Jinson wasn't having any of whatever Bonnie wanted, from his crossed arms and the way he was frowning down at her. "…find Thalia…hopefully won't need…in case she…"

Still, I thought back to her conversation with Jessa that morning. Her sympathy, and that she had kept Britt's and my secret, and that she was trying to find me before Father could learn what I was up to, meant she was a little bit on my side. I had an idea that Bonnie might be able to help with something important. But for that to work, I couldn't let her see me here.

Bonnie nodded curtly at him and turned in the direction of the smithy. Jinson set off the opposite way, likely making his way toward our village's kiosk for the goddess Chauntea. I had no idea whether Thalia had some kind of divine force that might permit her to purge me of poison willingly taken, but if they were fetching a cleric in anticipation of obstructing my plans, I couldn't afford to find out.

The both of them were out of sight before long, and I looked out across the empty square at what seemed like the longest distance I'd ever traveled in my life. I hooked the basket under my arm, hoping no one would see me, and crept out of the brush into the road. So far, so good. I still had to avoid attracting undue notice, though. I walked, forcing my feet not to hurry, across to the row of shops, and as if it were no big thing, slipped into the alley between the buildings. The back would be easier to break into, and probably more secluded as well.

Five minutes hence, my new career in burglary was off to a finer than expected start after I observed a conspicuous looking rock, found a key concealed beneath it, and used it to let myself in the back of Caster's store. I was reasonably certain no one had seen me. Inside, I relocked the door and leaned against it in relief.

After seeing Bonnie, I'd known the store would make an even more perfect place for winding up my affairs. Caster's shop functioned as a sort of depot for letters and packages to and from the village. So I needn't further expose myself looking for somewhere to leave Jessa's letter. And, while a packet addressed to the local lord's twelve-year-old daughter might attract curiosity, the same packet for a housemaid likely would not. I made my way to the front of the shop, picked up one of Caster's enchanted tapers from the display on the counter, and blew gently on the wick to wake it up.

The artificial light was much brighter than I expected, and I quickly muffled it under my cloak. After a few tense moments, I decided no one had seen the illumination, however brief, through the front windows.

Caster had an office in the back, so I made my way there in the dark and closed the door before lighting the room and seating myself behind his small desk. The desk had a pen with a nice nib, and an inkpot, and I pulled out a sheet of paper and tried to think what I should say.

Should I pretend it was six months from now, that all was well, and that I'd finally been able to stop running long enough to write her? It was riskier to have to ask Bonnie to wait before giving it to her. The more I tried to engineer things, the greater the chance it would go awry in some way. And I didn't like lying outright.

Still, it seemed wrong to just admit I'd given up.

And… I had a dim sense that I needed to stay away from trying to articulate my reasoning, to myself or anyone. The _how_ was a logistical problem… the _why_ was something else. I was a sensible person, and I always had been—and in general, sensible people did not kill themselves. Trying to explain to my sister, in writing, my choice to buck that long tradition would probably unravel my remaining nerve.

And that nerve had given me the resolve, however temporarily, to choose my own end rather than endure a waking death entombed in my own body.

Ugh. I was overthinking all of it, like I always did.

I tore off a smallish piece of paper. On it I wrote carefully: _For Jessy—love endures._

While I waited for the ink to dry, I shook a lemon sweet out of the packet Greta had given me and put it on my tongue, the sour shock a welcome distraction. Then I twisted Britt's ring off my finger, whispered the words that brought it to light, and buffed it to a nice shine on my skirt.

How I had cherished that ring.

Letter, or no letter, it made little difference, I saw now. In her place, I would be heartbroken. Nothing I could do would spare her that grief. It was vain to think otherwise.

What I had to offer her was my dearest possession, and a package of the best lemon candies in three counties, and those would have to do.

 _I love you forever_ , I wrote on another bit of paper, twisted it around my ring, and then folded the ring up in the first piece of paper. She would understand.

I ate another of Jessa's lemon sweets before closing the packet and tucking the folded paper with my ring inside. To Bonnie I wrote a short note: _Please give this to Jessa. Very important._ I thought for a moment, then added, _P.S. I know what you tried to do for me. Thank you._

It was fast going with the difficult part out of the way. I folded the papers up into a tidy package, tied it securely with string, and addressed it to _Bonnie Claypool, care of Bright Hall._ I left that in Caster's package tray at the front of the shop.

I didn't care to hang on to a basket in the woods, so I wrote a second short note, requesting Caster return it to Greta. I set his shop key on the note, along with a gold piece to pay for the things I had taken, and picked out a belt pouch from his stock to hold my sleeping draughts.

Before leaving, I tightened my bootlaces.

—∞—∞—∞—

While I was inside, the snow had begun. But murky as conditions were, it would take time to accumulate, and the blizzard would cover my tracks and conceal me from anyone looking for me. I pulled my hood up and walked into the cold, swirling darkness.

All that remained was to get out of town and to walk as far as I could bear, and then rest could be my reward. It was some comfort, at least, to think this would all be over before morning.

I had to concentrate to avoid losing my way, but I went slowly, feeling my way along the buildings, until I reached the east side of the village. Here I had to be a bit careful—once I got to the woods I'd be fine, but there was a footbridge somewhere nearby that spanned a deep, although long dry, creek bed. In these conditions it might be hard to find. I held my hands out in front of me and made slow, short steps, wary of taking an unexpected fall.

Except, my mind felt like playing tricks.

"Os!" I heard Britt shout somewhere nearby. "Where are you? Oswin!"

I stopped dead in my tracks, heart thudding with stupid, absurd hope.

"I was wrong!" he yelled. "Oswin! Please come back!"

It wasn't real. Right?

"Britt?" I called uncertainly, but there was no answer. "Britt?" I tried to make my voice louder the second time.

Nothing.

It was wishful thinking, and my unraveled nerves, and no more. Of course I wanted to believe he had changed his mind and come looking for me, that together we would find some way out of this, and discover our version of happily ever after. Nobody wouldn't hope for that, deep down.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned to go—but there was no ground under my feet.

With a terrified shriek quickly lost in the storm, I tumbled into the dark.

—∞—∞—∞—

I woke on my side in the gathering snow, my senses dulled from the cold, but heightened from the sickening pain in my right leg. Something was wrong, I knew without having to look or feel for it in the dark. Something was _very_ wrong.

I brushed a thin blanket of snow from my face—how long had I been out?—and lay there a few moments trying to get my bearings before I mustered the energy to sit up.

Trying to sit was a mistake. A searing agony tore through me so hard I almost passed out again. After that I forced myself to lie motionless, trying to contain my nausea. I retched up the bilious contents of my empty stomach on the ground next to me anyway.

I closed my eyes, but the tears still escaped, freezing before they could slide all the way down my cheeks. I breathed heavily through my nose, trying to marshal myself despite the anguish of my shattered leg.

I was a fool, who had failed in all things, and I was finished.

My mind wandered in an aimless haze for a while before I managed to focus again.

I had never tried to pray before. Humbling herself wasn't Mother's style, and Father took a pragmatic approach to religion, preferring to donate gold so that local faithful might foster good works amongst the populace, rather than make any outward demonstration of devotion.

But it was worth a try. I took account of my best options. "Ilmater," I whispered, trying to think of the most worshipful way to express my wishes. "Thou art… a solace to those who suffer. I beg you, preserve my sister. Give her strength in days to come, if those days be unkind to her. Please… take care of her, if you will it." I waited, wondering if I would feel, see, or hear something.

Oh, well. Ilmater seemed like kind of a creep, anyway.

Careful not to move in a way that might further pain my leg, I clasped my hands for my next plea. "Torm, Tyr… defenders of justice. My father promised to me in the name of the Triad that he would not force my sister to marry against her will. I dedicate my death to you, if you will prevent him breaking his solemn oath."

Nothing. Perhaps the Triad gods felt the forced premature execution of one's hastily planned suicide was too cheap and easily offered a dedication to warrant their notice. Fair enough.

Anyway, it was stupid to have hoped some eleventh hour entreaty for godly favor after a life of relative faithlessness would yield me anything at all.

I wondered if my sleeping draughts had survived the fall. Not that it entirely mattered—I was dying down here one way or another, that much was evident. But I felt for my belt pouch anyway, and was amazed to discover its contents still intact.

With unbearable slowness, I fought my way to a sitting position, painfully turning myself over and dragging my body backwards until my back was against the rocky bank of the dead creek that would soon be my grave. My breathing was labored, but I didn't dare rest from my exertions. Fainting again might leave me with too little strength to poison myself if I ever woke.

I took out the sleeping draughts. I still had the taper I'd taken from Caster's shop, so I blew on it to give myself a little light and dropped it next to me.

"Nothing for it, then," I said aloud to the deafening silence, and uncorked the first bottle. The draught shone a beautiful emerald in the light from the taper, and it tasted better, less medicinal, than I expected—faintly sweet, and syrupy. I quaffed the whole bottle in one go, threw it aside, and picked up the second, giving it a playful shake. The viscous liquid swirled satisfyingly, coating the insides of the glass with a film that slowly thinned and disappeared as gravity reasserted itself.

I turned the bottle again, bemused at the pretty liquid, before I noticed to my great surprise that I was already woozy. It always seemed to take Mother longer to feel the effects of these things. Maybe the cold, or my broken leg, were hastening it along.

Either way, better not to tarry. I removed the cork with numb fingers.

I downed half, then raised the rest of the bottle in a halfhearted toast. "Kelemvor"—I addressed the swirling white expanse above me, unsure wherever it was a god of death and eternal judgment might dwell anyway—"if it's not too much trouble, I hope you'll consider that while I admittedly didn't do very well at living, I died the best I knew how." I stopped to concentrate on my breathing and on staying awake. "In a way that I hope will hurt the fewest people. What I mean to say… just know, I'm trying." I realized that if I didn't finish the bottle now, I might not have the chance. I gulped down the remaining liquid, thinking how strange my numb lips felt. "I'm really trying."

"At any rate," I continued, then left off as I noticed my shoulder begin a slow leftward slide from where I sat leaning against the creekbank. I caught myself clumsily on my elbow and tried to remember what I'd been about to say. Something to do with Jessa. Or Britt. "Oh, never mind. I expect you don't have much to do with the living anyway."

I stared at my feet, fascinated, for they were still attached to my body, even though one of my legs was twisted at a truly, marvelously impossible angle. I concentrated to see if I could move my other foot, but I couldn't. Nor could I move my fingers. How interesting. I was on my side again now, lying awkwardly sprawled, my body twisted as if I had spent a restless night sleeping next to a kicking, bratty little Jessa, and woken up with limbs all akimbo. My elbow must have buckled without me noticing.

"Well, if you ever do care for living people, anyway… I hope you remember my two favorites." My eyes fluttered closed, but I forced them open and looked up at the light from the taper playing against the white flakes eddying all around me. I had more to say. "Please. For Britt. And Jessa. She's… they're…" I tried to remember the words I wanted, but my thoughts were trudging too slowly for that. I was so weary. "…more worth your time than I was."

I sighed my relief, exhaling my terrors and replacing them with comforting warmth. I knew, distantly, that this came from the sleeping draught and not from my incompetent efforts to encourage divine interest in my petty mortal concerns. But I was grateful, all the same, not to feel frightened, or worse, regretful.

I let my eyes close.


	7. Doubt Thou the Stars Are Fire

Waking up not dead wasn't like in books.

Not bewildering, or dramatic, or poignant. I didn't spend long moments in unwitting contemplation of why the afterlife had a utilitarian grey canvas ceiling, only to find out the truth in a comical way.

Mostly, it was nothing at all.

I was a little curious about a few things—why Greta's sleeping draughts were so unforgivably pissweak, why my leg no longer felt like a crushed pretzel, why I was on a cot in some kind of field hospital.

No patchy recall. No obvious gaps. My memory of the events that had swept me along to my final extremity seemed intact—the only missing part was why my final extremity had turned out to be so provisional.

It must be about midday, I judged by the light. People were in cots everywhere in various states of evident ill health. That must include me. Whatever this place was, nobody seemed to have much expectation that its inmates do anything useful with themselves. Fine by me.

I closed my eyes again. Being alive was a sort of interesting development in the abstract, but it didn't have a lot of practical utility at the moment.

"Intriguing choice. Some might expect you to have had your fill of sleep, by now," observed a mild, lightly accented voice from very close by.

If I'd had nerves remaining or a concern for self-preservation, I might have jumped. Instead, I turned my head slightly to look at the man sitting on a camp stool by my cot, peering at me with bland regard over his spectacles. Older than my father by a few years, I guessed, with messy brown hair, close cropped, but still sticking up every which way. He set his book aside and reached for a carafe of water on a stand by my cot. I studied his black leather breastplate and tunic and decided he must be some kind of cleric.

When he finished pouring the water and turned back to me I made the mistake of inhaling too quickly and choked on my dry throat. He set the cup down and pressed one hand firmly against my sternum, murmuring a few words. My coughing fit subsided.

"Don't try to move just yet."

I ignored him, fighting to get up on one elbow, just enough to be able to drink without help, but couldn't manage the effort. When I gave up, he skipped the told-you and slipped one arm smoothly behind my shoulders, lifting me up enough to take a few sips. The exertion necessitated a short rest on my part, but the man didn't seem to mind waiting.

"You have many questions, I expect," he commented after a couple iterations of this routine, "but we can get to those soon enough."

I contemplated him in silence. What this man's interest in my affairs might be, I couldn't imagine, but with his help I eventually summoned enough strength to prop myself up and control my hand enough to hold the cup unassisted. He topped it off from the carafe and resumed his seat.

"Wh—" My voice came out creaky, sounding like it belonged to someone else. "Wh—" I broke into another coughing fit but waved him off when he reached for me.

"Where?" He tried to save me the effort of speech by anticipating the question.

"No—" I shook my head vehemently. I knew I was going to have to hear about all that at some point, but wasn't eager to get to it.

"You want to know what happened. Why you're here."

"No." I shook my head again. "What"—I started to cough again and stopped to catch my breath—"What are you reading?" I inclined my head toward the bedstand where he'd set the book. I couldn't make out the title.

A crinkle appeared at one corner of his mouth. "Elminster's _Treatise on the Herbology of the Middle Continent_."

I closed my eyes and labored through my next sentence. "Oh. I hate… that guy. Have you read...his Greater Faerunian Bestiary?"

"I'm a bit of a completist, yes," the man admitted.

"How did… you find it?"

"Heavily pompous and lightly researched."

I decided I didn't dislike him. "How bad is… his take on… herbology? Does it compare favorably… to his unsupported… theories on bugbear… social structure?"

"It's more misogynistic than one might expect from a phytological chronicle."

"Oh, but… everyone loves an… affable misogynist," I said.

The man snorted, then cocked his head in rueful agreement and took the empty cup back from me. "…true."

I wanted to ask him if he was just a general reader or if he had a specific interest in botany, and if so, whether he'd read Gruenor's encyclopediae on agronomical craft, but I was so very, very tired. "Just a moment," I apologized, only intending to close my eyes for a few minutes, but when I next opened them it was after dark. A mixture of torches and magical light sources lit the huge tent, and caretakers moved between the rows of cots attending to their patients.

The man was still there, but he was reading and not looking at me. I used the opportunity to examine him. His high cheekbones had a northern look. Silver Marches, maybe, from the accent. I could tell his boiled leather breastplate had some kind of design stippled into it, but not what it might be. Nor could I work out his patron deity.

"Can I ask you something?" My voice was raspy, but at least I didn't have to stop to rest mid-sentence this time.

He closed the book with a snap, making me wonder if he'd known I was awake and had merely been waiting for me to announce myself. "Certainly."

"I don't know you. And I know I wasn't awake for it, but I have a feeling you haven't left my side all day. Aren't there… other people who need you more?"

"Ah," he said. "Yes, well. In cases like yours it's customary not to leave the patient unattended."

My bafflement must have been plain.

"One of the more reliable predictors of suicide is a previous attempt," he explained. "Thus…" He gestured vaguely.

Oh. Right.

"I felt that was your own private matter, however, so I allowed everyone here to believe you're one of the plague-stricken."

"Plague-stricken?" I raised myself up on my elbow and looked around, troubled. I knew most of these people. "What kind of plague?"

His brow knit in contemplation. "It's some kind of… thaumaturgical contagion, though not one I've encountered before."

"Why… aren't you helping them?"

"I consulted a bit, until today, when you woke. But I was sent here for you specifically, so you've been my chief concern."

"Sent?" I puzzled over this, trying to think who might possibly have had an inkling of where to find me, and why they would have sent some mysterious stranger I'd never seen before, instead of going themselves. I couldn't come up with anything. "Sent by who?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't remember?"

I frowned in confusion.

"Hm." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Too bad. I was looking forward to hearing whatever it was you did to make such an impression."

I stared at him. "On whom?"

He looked at me with evident amusement. "I admit, I expected you to be sharper than that, after I discovered you've read a book or two."

I frowned again, my mind churning. "Stand up."

He obliged.

"Bring the light closer."

He picked up the lamp on the bed stand. In the illumination I saw the scales of justice on his breastplate that I hadn't been able to discern in the shadows. "You're… a servant of Kelemvor."

He set the lamp down and resumed his seat. "That's better. And?"

"I didn't do anything special. It was… stupid."

"I doubt that. The summons I received was emphatic."

I looked away. "I was already woozy on sleeping draughts by then. You saw."

"I did."

"Why send someone for me? I'm nobody."

"I don't know." The man gave me an appraising look. "Perhaps he saw some potential in you, and thought your quitting the mortal world would be a waste." He shrugged. "Or, he has a dark sense of humor and thought it would be amusing to despoil your plans."

"Not very reverent about your patron, are you?" I observed.

"Everyone's a critic." But he smiled.

I looked around at the other people in the tent and sobered at the sight of so many lying ill. "What… did you mean before when you said this sickness is some kind of magical affliction?"

His smile dropped. "It comes on like a fever, at first, but instead of burning out the way a fever should, it settles in the vital organs and destroys them. The more correct denomination might be to call it a curse, albeit not one like I've seen before. And a communicable one at that."

I mulled this over. "Communicable. Like lycanthropy?"

He nodded. "Similar. But bad as it is, lycanthropy isn't in itself deadly. This one is, in almost all cases."

My mouth felt dry again. "What doesit do? You said it affects the internal organs."

"Are you familiar with a disease that causes mortification of the limbs?"

"You mean gangrene?"

"Yes. It's a little like that, but it begins in the heart or lungs. It rots its victims from inside out," he said grimly, "but slowly. It acts in weeks instead of days."

"It what." I struggled to pull myself to a sitting position.

"Careful." He caught me by the arms before I could get all the way up. "You—"

I pushed him off. "I don't see why you would waste time on someone like me when a horrible thing like that is going on."

He looked at me, frowning slightly, but didn't respond to the attack.

With some effort, I swung my legs over the side of the cot.

"Wait—"

My feet skidded out from under me as soon as they touched the ground.

The man caught me, sort of, on my way down. "Right. I hadn't yet gotten to that part." He helped me back to the edge of the cot and sighed. "Things got a bit knotty when it came to your leg."

I looked down at my right leg. No longer crushed, no longer quite alive, either. It was whole again, but the limb was an unhealthy grey color from the knee down.

"Meaning what, exactly?" I tried to work up the nerve to touch it.

"Meaning, I was able to repair the physical break, but… I believe you already picked up the contagion somewhere."

"Is that why I was coughing?"

"No. You were just parched from being unconscious so long. I could only get so much water down your throat without choking you." How long was so long, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder. "The break was a bad one," he went on. "The bone was partially crushed. It broke through the skin."

"That explains why it hurt so goddamned much."

"Yes. I think you were infected shortly before you fell. A few hours, maybe. I believe what happened might have had something to do with the timing of the break. Regardless of why, the sickness centered itself in the bone, instead of the thoracic organs. Do you follow?"

I frowned. "Not entirely."

"I think because your most vulnerable point at the time of disease onset was your crushed leg, the pestilence settled there instead of your lungs. But, in restoring the bone, it was… fused with your leg. Still there, but its progression was halted."

I braced myself and touched my calf. It was like marble, smooth and firm, though not so heavy as it seemed it should be. "It's… cold. I can't feel anything." I tapped it with two fingers and shuddered. It was like rapping on wood. "So… am I going to rot from the inside, then? Or just lose the leg?"

"I think no to both. I believe it was neutralized and wasn't allowed to run its usual course in your case. Whether that was due to coincidence, timing, or intervention"—he cast his eyes briefly upward—"I can't say. But its malignancy seems to have been eliminated."

I took this in. "Will… I be able to walk again?"

"I expect so. With some practice."

I set my bad leg tentatively on the ground, testing my weight on it. The sensation was surreal.

"Lady Oswin! Is that you up?"

I threw the thin camp blanket over my leg and turned to see Talia, looking weary, but vastly relieved. "Oh, thank the goddess, you _are_ awake. I need you to come with me as soon as you can stand."

"Can this wait?" the man objected before I could open my mouth to reply. "She shouldn't be up."

"No," Talia said firmly. "It can't."

The man studied us for a moment, then nodded and stood, excusing himself. "I'll find you… a crutch somewhere."

I looked at Talia in mild befuddlement. "What do you need with me, though?"

Her face took on a sort of heartsick look that alarmed me. She sat lightly on the edge of my cot. "I have some hard news for you," she began.

My heart clutched with fear. "Is _Jessa_ here? Is she sick?" I searched the room with my eyes, terrified to see her telltale mop of honey gold hair on one of the sickbeds.

"No. I have no reason to think Lady Jessa is sick."

I relaxed a little. As long as she was fine, whatever it was couldn't be that bad, at least not compared with everything else that had happened.

"Your parents aren't taking any chances letting it spread to their household. We're under self-imposed quarantine here, and the entire estate has been sequestered for over two weeks."

"Two weeks," I replied in surprise. "That long? It's been that long?"

"Yes. In you the disease seems to have run a different course. Unlike most people you never woke up, but you're one of the very few yet who has revived. But that's not what I came over here to discuss." Talia took my hand in hers. "The night of the storm, Bonnie came asking for my help. She told me… probably most everything. About you and Britt, and the wedding contract. She thought you were going to run away, or that you might hurt yourself."

"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked uncertainly.

"Because Britt is sick. It's mostly fever talk, but every time he's awake he asks for you."

 _Britt was sick_. I reflected dully on this. "Sick with the same thing…" I looked around and took in all the still forms surrounding us.

"Yes."

"The one that… rots people inside?"

Talia looked troubled. "Yes."

"Is his father with him?"

"No. He's taken ill too." Talia looked at me with an expression so sad it felt like I should be the one comforting her. "We think Britt may not have much longer. You should come see him right away."

"He's awake, then?"

"Here and there," she said. "Not really awake. But he's coherent at times." Talia squeezed my hand. "Most of them become delirious, at the end. He's held on better than many."

I couldn't answer.

"I didn't tell anyone else about you and him," Talia said. "I thought you might both want it that way."

"Thank you," I said numbly. I saw the man coming back, crutch in hand. "I would like to see him now, please."

Talia and the man helped me get unsteadily to my feet, and stable enough that I could hobble a few feet at a time before stopping for breath. Then Talia led me to the other end of her makeshift hospital, where Britt lay, looking drawn and wasted, on a camp cot that should have been too small for him. I stifled a cry and sank to a seat at his bedside.

"How can he have lost so much weight?" I asked Talia in dismay.

"Fighting off the sickness takes most of the body's energy, and it's hard to get them to eat much. They're awake so little and if one of us doesn't get there before they fall back into the fever dreams…" She sighed. "I'm sorry. We're shorthanded. And he's been hanging on a long time already."

I looked at Britt's sunken, pale face and rejected everything she said. I couldn't let him die, whether he hated me or not. I was here now, and it didn't matter how understaffed the healers were—I would sit here day and night until he recovered. I had the considerable advantage, unlike everyone else in this place, of not caring very much whether I myself lived or died. "Will food help? What does he need?" I asked.

She didn't answer, so I looked up at her as the man in black came to stand at her side, surveying us. "Tell me what you do for this." When she still didn't reply, I tried a different tack. "He has to stop losing weight. Is there a way to wake him up so I can help him eat something?"

Talia and the man looked at each other. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. "Stop that. There has to be _something_ we can do. I'll do _anything_ if it will make him better. Just tell me what. Tell me what he needs."

I looked at the man in black and thought resentfully about how Britt could have used his help a lot more than my stupid, unconscious body did for the last _two weeks_. Maybe he wouldn't be so thin now if someone had looked after him the way this man had evidently looked after me. That didn't seem like a helpful thing to bring up, though, and perhaps there still was something the man could do to help, so I suppressed my anger.

Talia looked pained. "I think what Britt needs most is to feel your presence. Even if he doesn't wake up again, his spirit will know you were here with him."

His _spirit_ will know? I had never heard anything so unhelpful in all my life.

Talia probably read the disgust on my face, because she excused herself quickly. "I should get back to the other patients."

"Whatever you did with my leg—obviously you know something of healing," I said to the man when she was gone. I set my hand on Britt's forehead, which was distressingly cool under my fingers. "Can you do something like that…with the internal organs?"

The man sat on the other side of Britt's cot and regarded me in silence for a moment. "I wish I could," he said. "Divine magic doesn't work on this curse. The unlucky few we tried to heal in that fashion, before we realized, died _more_ quickly. It does something to accelerate the affliction."

"It didn't do that to me."

"No, and that is a curious thing, but it's also a clumsy approach to a delicate problem. I was only able to contain the corruption in your leg by fusing the whole limb into what might as well be stone for as much use as it'll be to you now."

"So?" I whispered. "Do that."

He looked down at Britt and set one hand on his chest, concentrating for a moment. "The progression is extensive in his case. _You_ can live—comfortably even, once you're used to it—with a leg that no longer functions the way it was intended. But he can't live, with a heart, lungs, or liver of stone. He couldn't survive that way even if it were only one of his vital organs, rather than most of them."

I leaned over Britt and put my hands on his arm, squeezing my eyes shut to keep from crying. I had to _think_. "Give him some of my life, then. Surely Kelemvor has that power." When he didn't answer right away, I added, "Or… all of it, if that's what it takes."

"Such power exists, but I don't possess it. And were I to try, Kelemvor wouldn't be party to it."

I felt a tear sliding down my cheek and raised my head. " _Please_. Tell me something I can live with. I can't live with any of these. I can't live, without him."

"His body is being devoured from the inside," the man said gently, taking his seat again. "There is nothing in my power or yours to stop that or to make his passing less painful—for you. The most critical thing you can do is to be here with him so that he understands how deeply you care. I will help you, if you wish. Together we can put him at ease. When his time comes he needn't be frightened or in pain."

At these words, I couldn't keep from looking at him with complete, unbridled animosity, even though I knew he was only the bearer of all these ill tidings and not their genesis. He gazed back at me, apparently unoffended. Something in his calm eyes and neutral expression made me think that many, many people had looked at him before with this kind of wroth, and that he was well used to it.

That thought made me sad. What he was asking me to accept was the worst by far of all the bad things that had happened yet, but it wasn't his fault, or his responsibility.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, feeling my eyes fill and brim over. "It's not your fault." I was _so_ tired of crying. It seemed strange to think there had ever been a time when I wasn't full up to my neck with unshed tears, and stranger still to remember how that time had lasted most of my life. "It's… been a hard couple of days." I corrected myself. "Weeks. I guess."

"You have nothing to apologize for," the man said. "You've been dealt a cruel hand, and I promise, I've seen far worse in my time than the desperation of a young woman forced to begin grieving her husband before they have even been parted."

Something in my face made him realize his error. "You aren't married."

"It's…. complicated. We weren't able to." I looked at Britt, wondering if there was a limit to the amount of despair a person could feel before it just killed them outright.

"I see."

We sat in silence for a while. I listened to Britt's tortured breathing and tried to strike a balance between getting used to the idea that he would soon be gone, and avoiding the thought entirely.

After some time the man spoke. "Would you like to be?"

It took me a second to understand what he meant. "You—is that something you do?"

"Yes, on rare occasion we take a quick five minutes from the maniacal celebration of grave ritual and quit our sepulchers to perform a wedding ceremony," he said drily. "On special occasions the participants are even still alive."

I glanced up at him.

"Sorry. When I said Kelemvor has a dark sense of humor, I meant me." He paused. "And when I said humor, I meant more like an occasional overwhelming sense of all-encompassing bitterness."

"I guess I'm in good company, then." I stroked Britt's hand. "You didn't offend me," I added.

"The offer stands. And whatever you choose, I will help you ensure his journey to judgment is an unencumbered one."

"What if he doesn't wake up again?" I asked after a short silence.

"I can wake him, for a while at least. Long enough."

I thought about the cold fury in Britt's voice when he said we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. He probably wouldn't appreciate me being here at all, let alone making decisions for him.

"I want to. But I don't think I should," I confessed.

"Why do you say that?"

"He doesn't want to marry me. Last time I saw him he… I said all the wrong things and made everything worse. I think it might be better to leave it alone. I'd be doing it for myself, not him." I couldn't understand why I was saying all these awful, personal things to someone I didn't even know. Or, maybe not knowing him was what made it easier. "I don't think it would be right, when I know it's against his wishes."

"Well, _traditionally_ ," the man said in an ironic tone, "a wedding entails some expression of assent from both parties. I expect he may have had a change of heart. Talia told me he asked about you every time he woke up. That doesn't suggest a hateful disposition where you are concerned."

"Maybe so, but if he was fever sick he might be thinking of some happier time." I swallowed hard. "He was… so angry that he broke it off with me the day of the storm. It would be nice if he changed his mind like you said, but I don't think I have a right to expect that." I took a breath. "I already feel like a fraud being here, knowing how much he hated me the last time we talked." To my surprise, I felt a tightness loosen a little in my chest at having confessed to being there undeservingly. "I would feel even worse if I used his delirium to trick him into marrying me when I know that's not what he wants."

"Do you want to know what I think?"

"Not really."

He ignored me. "I think, you won't know, if you don't ask. And I think, if you don't ask, you'll regret it later." The man leaned forward, touched Britt's shoulder, and—

"—no, wait!—" I tried to stop him—

"Os?" Britt murmured, stirring to consciousness.

The man turned his back to give us at least the polite illusion of privacy, and stood in quiet contemplation of the patient on the other side of Britt.

The tears were spilling from my eyes already. "I'm here." I clutched his hand in both of mine, hoping he wouldn't remember our fight and send me away. "Are you still—"

"—I'm sorry, Oswin… I'm so sorry." I looked at him, shocked to see tears in his eyes. I'd never seen Britt, or any man for that matter, cry before. "I said… such terrible things to you." He stopped to catch his breath. "I wish I… could take it all back."

I waited anxiously for him to finish gasping for air. "Britt, you should save your strength. Don't try to talk too much. Please. It's all right. You don't have to explain."

He shook his head in weak defiance. "No. I do… have to. Your father's men—" He took in a draggy breath and began to cough violently.

The man turned back immediately and repeated the same trick he'd done for me earlier. Like mine, the coughing stopped right away. "Thanks," Britt told him, sounding stronger. "That's much better." He didn't have to stop to breathe every third word this time, which made me feel a little less guilty for wanting so badly to hear him finish saying he didn't hate me anymore.

The man resumed his vigil over the other patient.

Britt resumed his story. "A couple of men from Brighton came to the smithy, not long after you left. They wouldn't say exactly what they wanted with you, but they wanted to know where you were. I wasn't feeling very inclined to talk about you, considering, so I just told them you'd left and I assumed you'd gone home because we'd finished with each other like your father wanted." He glanced up at me, looking pained. "They asked so many questions about you… even before Dad talked to me I was starting to realize I'd made a terrible mistake."

I clasped his hand, I hoped reassuringly.

"Dad was in the kitchen. He saw you go and he came into the shop to talk to me, at the same time your father's men did. He didn't say anything to them, but after they were gone he bolted the door and we had it out."

"You fought?" I was confused. "About what?"

"The first thing he said was, what in the nine hells did you do to crush that girl so badly? Her face looked like death."

"But your father hates me. Why would he care?"

"He doesn't hate you. I didn't understand before, but now I get why he was so disapproving of us. He was concerned about the trouble we might get ourselves into, being from such different worlds, and being that he assumed one day your father would decide to marry you to someone else. He tried to warn me a few times, but I thought all that was so old fashioned, that it would never happen to us."

"Me too. My family's so modern in other ways. I really… thought we were different."

"I did too. Dad knew better. He was afraid of a lot of things, I guess—that you would get pregnant, that we'd get married without permission and pay the consequences with your father, that one or both of us would end up dead as a result. I guess a few years ago and a few counties over, something like that happened and the local lord put both his daughter and her lover to the sword for defying him. What a heartless thing—his own kin."

"I never heard that before." I shivered. "I can't tell you how shocked I was when my father threatened you. I called his bluff… only he wasn't bluffing. After I left I realized I couldn't really blame you for not believing me, when I didn't believe it either, at first."

Britt rubbed his thumb over the palm of my hand, a gesture that soothed me with its familiar gentleness. "I'd never heard it either. Before he explained all this—I thought he'd understand my side, if I told him all the things you said that were so ridiculous." He paused and looked up at me. "But instead he said I was a fool not to believe you, when you'd never given me the slightest cause to think you untrue, and cruel, for callously driving you away when you deserved my sympathy instead."

"Oh." It was still difficult to reconcile the notion that Britt's father, who had never treated me with anything more than chilly courtesy, was capable of thinking kindly toward me.

"'Oh' is right. It surprised me too, how ferociously he took up for you. It sounded almost as though… he likes you. It made me think, were you a baker's daughter or some other much less dangerous woman for me to love, Dad would have quite adored you.

"Anyway, he said the one thing I was right about was that running away with you was entirely out of the question, but that I was an idiot if I thought you suggesting something so desperate was some kind of sick ploy."

My eyes flooded. "I did such a bad job at explaining myself, though. My nerves were frayed, and I was so tired, and frightened. You weren't to blame there."

Britt changed the subject. "Did you know that when I was a boy, I burned down Chauntea's kiosk because I was playing with the devotion candles?"

I shook my head. "I didn't know that was you."

"It was. I'm the reason they use Caster's tapers there now instead of real candles."

I smiled and wiped my eyes. "What made you think of that?"

"Because I've never had a beating before or after like the one Dad gave me for starting that fire. And the tongue-lashing I got after you left was much, much worse."

"He was too harsh. The things I asked of you weren't reasonable."

"No, he was right. He said most people are never fortunate enough to be so loved that someone would offer to give up their entire life for a chance be with them. He also said he was beyond ashamed of me that I would repay that devotion with such uncharitable reprobation. His exact words. I remember, because they've been ringing in my ears ever since."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I climbed onto the cot next to him and slid my arm over his chest, trying not to hurt him. He slipped his arm around me and pulled me close.

"I understand now what an impossible position you were in when you came to see me. You really didn't have anywhere left to turn." Britt's voice sounded thick when he spoke again. "I'm so very, very sorry for how I treated you."

I lay my head on his shoulder. "It's all right. All is forgiven."

After a short silence he said, "It isn't all right. But I'm grateful for your forgiveness, even if I don't deserve it." He reached up and took my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. "What happened after you left?"

"Oh…" I hadn't expected him to ask about that, for some reason. "I don't…" I trailed off. I didn't want to make him feel worse by being honest about what I'd done and how desperate I'd been.

"It's all right." He squeezed my hand. "Bonnie came to the smithy just as Dad and I were finished talking, and—well, I got some idea from that conversation how bad it must have been for you, is all I mean. I won't make you talk about it, if you don't want to. But you _can_ tell me anything you do want."

"All right. I'll… think about it."

"After I talked to Bonnie, I was pretty scared that I wouldn't find you… in time." He sighed. "I went looking for you. I knew it was stupid, but I was so desperate to find you and make things right. I even imagined I heard you call back to me once. But it was just the start of the fever. I passed out right after and woke up here."

I stiffened. "Where?"

"They said I was found at the edge of the village, near the dry creek. I don't know how I didn't freeze to death—it wasn't until the next day. Some farmer was passing through and brought me in. Why?"

The man's back was still turned, resolutely pretending not to listen to us, no doubt. I wondered if he already knew about any of this.

"That was real," I said. "That really happened."

"It did? You were there?"

"I thought I only imagined your voice. When I called back, there wasn't a reply."

Britt was quiet for a moment. "I probably gave you the fever, when we… well, anyway, it's probably my fault you got sick. Did you… collapse outside somewhere too?"

"Not exactly." I hesitated, then explained. "I fell into the dry creek in the dark and broke my leg. It was… really bad. I knew I was going to die there one way or another, and I was… going to take them anyway. So I drank the two bottles of sleeping draught."

He didn't answer, but I felt his arm tighten around me.

"I think maybe the reason we didn't die there…" I wasn't sure how to tell him the rest. I didn't really understand it myself.

"What is it? Os?"

"I said a prayer. To Kelemvor. It was… silly, honestly. It was barely a prayer. And I was out of my head on the sleeping draughts by then. But I asked him to look after Jessa, and you. I wonder if that could be part of why we lived."

"Well, not that I did anything to warrant being in your prayers, but thanks for that," Britt said in a tight voice. "I can't think of anything worse than not getting to talk to you one more time, after how terrible I was to you."

"Britt. Your father… did they tell you—"

"—that he's sick too? Yes. He hasn't been awake for days."

"I'm sorry."

Britt sighed. "Maybe it's better we both go. I hate to imagine him all alone in the world. He took it hard when my mother died. He never remarried, he cared so much for her. To lose me as well would be too cruel."

To lose him as well. I'd been doing all right keeping our reality at bay, but at these matter-of-fact words I felt my heart lurch painfully. I swallowed hard to hold back my tears.

"Os?" he asked.

"Mm." I nodded wordlessly into his shoulder.

"They did tell you, right? That I don't have a lot of time left." He didn't sound upset, just concerned how I might feel about that.

I choked back a sob. "Yes. But… how can that possibly be true? I know you're weak, but you're fine right now. You sound _fine_."

"I'm not fine, Mouse," Britt said quietly. "He can keep me going, a little while, like this. But it's using up energy I don't really have. It's only a temporary cheat. It's worth it to burn myself out like this, to have some time with you, but I can feel my body… trying to surrender. These spells… it's only borrowed time."

"No. It's not fair," I whispered, knowing what a childish thing it was to say, but unable to help myself. "We deserved better than all this."

"I know, sweetheart. I know." He wasn't strong enough to rock me in his arms, so he settled for rubbing my back with his hand. "We got cheated. But the time we had, it was good, wasn't it?"

I nodded into his shoulder. "I love you."

"I love you too." He squeezed me.

"I have to tell you something. I don't have your ring anymore. I… left it for Jessy after I bought the sleeping draughts. Because… it's the nicest thing I own and I wanted her to have it when I was gone."

He gave me another squeeze. "I'm glad. You did good. She'll understand how much it meant to you. To us." He slipped his hand from mine and used it to tip my chin up so he could look at me. "It looks like there's something else. You all right?"

"It's just… that priest of Kelemvor. He said before, he could marry us. Officially. If you wanted that."

"Never mind me, is that what you want?"

"I think it's the _only_ thing I want."

He pressed his forehead to mine. "Me too."


	8. What Death Can Join Together

The man in black conducted the first wedding ceremony I'd ever heard of in which the marriage began with the couple already in bed. He was patient, even though when it came time to speak my vows I had to start over twice because my throat was so tight with tears.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. Without you," I said after the man had refreshed whatever spell was keeping Britt awake and painless and left to give us some privacy.

He was quiet a second. "Mm, that's a tough one. I _am_ exceptionally strong and manly. You'll have a hard time replacing me. I don't envy you that."

"Shut up. I'm being serious."

He ignored me. "I'm also very, very good at sex. That's important. You should probably put that on my grave marker."

I'd been keeping myself under control, but barely. At these words I began to bawl uncontrollably. "I'm sorry," I wept into his chest. "I know you're the one suffering and I shouldn't burden you with my feelings right now."

"I know I haven't had the job for long, but I think helping with feelings is one of those things a husband is supposed to do." He planted a kiss on top of my head. "If it's any consolation, you're also very, very good at sex. Probably almost as good as me."

I laughed, which felt strange because I was also still crying. "Thanks."

"Just stating a fact."

We were quiet as I slowly calmed down and stopped crying. "I think I'm managing this dying business with relative grace," he said after a while, "but one thing I do really regret about it is…" He stopped to clear his throat heavily.

"What is it?" I lifted my head. "Does it hurt? Do you need another healing spell?"

He shook his head and pulled me back down against him. When he spoke again, his eyes were shining. "I was really looking forward to having children with you someday, Os." He cleared his throat again, hard. "To being a family with you. I know that's not a very masculine thing to admit."

I couldn't speak, so I gripped his hand tighter.

"I lied, when I said I fell in love with you last year. It was so much longer ago that I thought it would scare you off if I told you the truth. It wasn't just that you're pretty, though you are. You're caring in ways so many other people aren't. You took Jessa everywhere with you, even when she was little. You didn't treat her like some bratty annoyance you had to deal with. Every time I saw you in the village you were with her. That's one of my favorite things about you."

"You never told me that," I whispered.

He stroked my hair. "I knew when we had children, you'd be just like that with them. I don't even remember my own mother. But you'd give our little ones what I never had. We'd _both_ give them what _we_ never had." Britt sighed. "I think that's why I was so goddamned mean to you. I got stuck on the idea that you being unable to do it my way meant you didn't want that life with me anymore. And… that thought hurt so much that I let myself give in to the desire to punish you for it. Not one of my better moments." He closed his eyes for a while before opening them and continuing. "I'm really sad we won't get to have that together."

"Me too." I blinked away tears. "You were going to be such a good father one day. And it wouldn't be formal and proper like it is with my parents. I tried to call my mother 'Mama' once and she called a servant to come take me away for being tiresome. It wouldn't be like that at our house."

"No," he agreed. "I can see you as someone's Mama."

I found his hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Os," he said after a moment. "I know you don't think you're good with people, but you're so much better than you think. You should forget everything your mother ever told you about yourself." He combed his fingers through my hair and I curled up closer. "I'm not near as scared as I should be, and it's because of you. I genuinely can't think of another person I'd rather have with me in my last few hours alive." He stopped and grinned at me, making sure I could see. "And that's not just because you're my wife and we've had a frankly astonishing amount of incredible sex for two people who don't live together."

I laughed even though my heart ached to bursting. "Please don't tell me you want to try to consummate our marriage in here. I don't think I could refuse you anything you truly wanted right now and the embarrassment would probably be the end of me."

"Oh, gods, no. Much as I've been enjoying the fact that you hurried over here without getting properly dressed, in my favorite of your many excellent and flattering undershirts, and that a thin slip of fabric is currently the only thing between me and the finest set of breasts on the continent… _whaat_ , I can't compliment my wife's lovely physique? _Fine_ …" He gave me another of his brilliant smiles and my chest wrenched with anguish. "As I was saying, I think if we were to attempt one of our legendary intimate acts, there's no probably about it—it _would_ be the end of me."

I rested my head on his chest. "Call me your wife again."

"Making demands—I heard that's something wives do." He gave my bottom a little smack. "By the way, I'm well aware nobody is supposed to talk this much about sex on their deathbed," he said, "and I really don't care. It would be impossible to overstate how much I liked sex with you. It was just about my favorite thing in the whole world."

"Me too," I whispered, feeling unutterably sad that everything we talked about now was inescapably past tense.

"Remember the time we—"

"—oh, I remember _every_ time we."

"Embarrassed? Trying to shut me up?"

"No, but I want there to be time to tell you _my_ favorite things too."

"Oh! By all means."

Suddenly I felt shy. "Well…" I began. "When you found out I like reading books, you decided you ought to read books, too, so I'd have someone to talk to about what I read. I loved you so much for that."

"It wasn't just that. I didn't want you to get bored with me because I didn't know as much as you. I had a lot of catching up to do."

"I don't know how you could think I'd ever get bored with you."

"Oh, right. Because of all the incredible sex."

"Right. It all comes down to that." I rolled my eyes and made sure he saw.

"What else?" He rubbed my back.

"My family and my responsibilities made things difficult sometimes—"

"—more so lately—" he put in.

"—I know. But… you never made me feel bad about that. I always really liked that about you. You're an easy person to be around."

"I like your list so far. Anything else I should know?"

"Yes…"

Britt was delighted. "Is my brand new wife _blushing_ to speak aloud what else she loves about me?"

"No… I think my face is just flushed because I'm so… sad… right now." I realized my nails were digging into him and loosened my grip.

"Oh. Well, that's less fun. Sorry. Come here." He pulled me close to him again.

"It's lots of things, that's what," I said after thinking on it. "I can't list them all. I love you, but I also just… _like_ you so, so much. You make me so happy… you're my truest friend. Apart from Jessy, which sort of doesn't count anyway… you're my favorite person."

"You really are set on getting me to cry today, aren't you?" Britt said after a short silence, his voice suspiciously tight.

"I promise I won't look."

"No, you earned it, it's only right you should get to see the fruits of your labor." He slipped his hand out of mine and wiped his eyes, then took my hand again. "Besides, I have more important promises to extract from you." His tone wasn't light and joking anymore.

"Like what?"

"Like, no sleeping draughts or poison or even just general irresponsible bullshit that will get you killed because you decided you don't care anymore. The afterlife isn't going anywhere. You have to promise me you'll live a life—a real life, a _full_ one—and for as long as you possibly can. If that means you marry someone else one day, do it. And don't do anything silly and noble like be celibate out of some misguided sense of loyalty to me, whatever you do. That would be a crime."

He squeezed my hip. "Did you get all that?"

"… yes."

"Then promise me. Wife."

"I… don't want to. Husband." I rested my forehead on his chest to keep him from seeing my face.

"Mouse. Don't make me call that priest back over here to annul our unconsummated union."

I half laughed, half cried into his chest at that. "Fine. I promise. I won't die on purpose."

"And?"

"All right. The rest, too."

"Good. And, I know you—no loopholes. Spirit of the law."

"But I really can't see how I'm ever going to get over you." I shifted so I could look up at him. "I… it's going to be really hard to not just curl up and die from… nothingness… when you're not in the world anymore."

Britt was quiet a little while. "I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't feel the same in your place."

"You see why I didn't want to promise? I'd rather be dead than alive without you."

"Oh, me too," he said breezily. "You'd never have gotten me to agree to something like that. But, you always have been a terrible negotiator. If our fates were reversed I couldn't kill myself fast enough… heeyyy, it's all right, I'm sorry for teasing."

He tightened his grip until I stopped shaking.

"You're tough," he whispered fiercely into my tangled hair. "You'll find a way to pick yourself up and do great things to make the world better for all kinds of people. Please do that. It's the only thing that makes any of this all right in the end."

"I didn't agree to that part," I mumbled into his neck. "I didn't set out to make the world better. I just wanted to be a competent landlord and marry you. I never wanted to do great things."

"What did you think love was?" He smiled. "It's making the world better. And _that_ is a great thing."

I _had_ to think about something different. "Britt," I recalled, "before, when you said—remember when we—and I interrupted you… do you remember what it was?"

"Oh, yes. The time we took a blanket to that pasture at night, and after you were finished having your way with me we fell asleep and then an aurocks almost stepped on you."

"Gods, why would you bring that up? We have so many nicer memories than that one."

"That one's a favorite of mine because it was probably the funniest thing I've ever seen. Apart from, it could have killed you, I mean."

"Right, apart from that."

"Well, what's your favorite, then, if you don't like that one?"

"Sex memory? Or just memory in general?"

"Oh, if those are different for you, I want to hear them both."

I squeezed his hand. "Shut up."

"I will if you tell me."

"All right. For the first one… probably something like our third or fourth time. It was the middle of the night and we—"

"—oh, _now_ you're blushing—"

"—I never thought I'd get to spend a whole night with you… and then you"—I laughed despite myself—"had my mother drugged while my father was away. I was in awe."

"Understandably. That was pretty incredible of me."

"It was such a long stretch of time to get to have. Anyway, it was the middle of the night and I woke up and was looking at you in the moonlight and I was tired and sore, but I wanted to get the most out of every moment we had."

I couldn't parse his expression as he listened.

"It—well, you remember."

"Tell me anyway."

"I woke you up. It was sweet. Unlike usual"—I gave him a gentle little jab in the chest—"you didn't say a word. And it hurt, some, but I didn't mind." I choked back a sob. "I was so happy to be with you. I loved you _so_ much that night."

"Oh, Mouse. I remember I was worried because it made you cry."

"You made me feel so loved."

He rubbed my back. "You better tell me your other favorite," he said hoarsely.

I swallowed my tears. "The time you told me your name was Cartwright, and you had this whole yarn about your grandfather's father's cart breaking a wheel and he was so fed up with wagons in that moment that he abandoned it in the middle of the village and took his life savings to the elderly smith and bought the place outright. From then on your family was in the smithing business."

"Oh, yes, that was a funny one."

"Well, _now_ it's funny, you ass. At the time I was ashamed of myself for thinking your name was Gowan the whole time. I didn't know my betrothed's correct name? Not to mention I'd known you for _years_."

"When all along, your real error was trusting a story you heard from me. As I recall, you questioned me about it over a couple of days until I admitted I was lying."

"And then your 'real' version was another damned story!"

"Oh, that's right, which story did I tell you? I think I made up something like four versions and then only used two."

"Losing track of your lies, are you? Not a promising start to our union." I managed a little smile.

"What was it, though?"

"You said the real story was boring, it was just that your grandmother was the one from a smithing family and she married a Cartwright."

"Oh, yes. I think I had you going a while with that. It took you days to decide you were right all along and my name _was_ Gowan."

"I'm glad, though. I like Gowan better." I thought for a second. "Britt. I can't go home again, after all this. Father will be looking for me. I don't rightly know what I'm going to do… but maybe I could use your name." I gave a little uncertain shrug.

"You don't think Oswin Gowan sounds too clunky? I always used to assume you'd want to keep Bright."

"Well… I might have done, if things had gone differently. Anyway, I thought perhaps I ought to go by a different given name."

"That's too bad. I love your name." Britt thought for a second. "What about Winn?"

"Winn Gowan. All right. I could answer to that."

"But Winny to your friends."

"Ugh."

"No? Well, just consider it, that's all I ask." He looked at me with the lopsided, impish smile I loved so much. "That's how you'll know your next _true_ friend—the person with enough guts to call you that."

"Britt? Can I tell you about my last night at home? It's really… ghastly, so I understand if you'd rather not hear."

"No, you should tell me. I want to know."

"Mother announced it at dinner. I was… just annoyed at first. I thought, it's their problem that they're going to be embarrassed when they can't fulfill a promise that I refuse to deliver." I wet my lips, trying to decide how much to say. "But the discussion turned ugly right away. I really regretted, then, that I hadn't told them about you. So I tried to—but Father stopped me before I could. Mother drank a lot and became hysterical and said a lot of… terrible things. She was so _angry_. She called Father a bastard, and though not in so many words… a rapist. She said I fetched a nice price when Father took me to market, and said I would have to do my duty to family, as she had, and that I would have to—" I broke off, unsure how much to recount from Mother's awful speech.

"Os?"

"She said… I would have to"—I decided Britt didn't need a perfectly faithful telling—"do whatever my lord husband wished. To give him children."

Britt frowned slightly, as if he suspected I wasn't telling the whole story, but nodded.

"She stormed away, and Father and I… went to battle. I don't know what else to call it. He already knew about us, and he said he'd been to see you, and that you understood it was over. He'd already thought of everything I would say to argue against all of it. I even lied and told him I was pregnant and he scarcely blinked. He said I might have to be 'purified,' was all. He said it would probably make me more valuable to my future husband, to know that I had conceived before."

"Oh, Mouse," Britt murmured sympathetically, rubbing my back with one hand.

"The whole argument was as if he put me in a room and locked every exit, but I had to try all the doors before I knew it was over. He told me…" I stopped to clear the tears from my throat. "He told me if I didn't do my duty he would make Jessy do it in my place. He said if I killed myself, or ran away, she would pay, and if I married you, you would pay."

Britt's eyes shone in the torchlight, but he blinked hard and kissed the top of my head without interrupting.

"He… broke me, I guess. I made him promise that he wouldn't ever do the same to Jessy, if I performed my duty to the family. He thought about it and agreed, and then I told him… I would kill him myself if he ever made her marry against her wishes." I swallowed. "He just laughed at me."

His jaw twitched a little, but he didn't cut in.

"Lord Dunleavy is from Silverymoon, and I couldn't stop thinking how that meant I would never, ever get to see you again, even on the sly. And probably Jessy too."

"Oh, Os. Small wonder you were so scared. That's more than a month from here, easily."

"More like two, by my reckoning. I think that's why I felt so… utterly defeated. I went to my room. I lay there a long time, thinking about a lot of things, before Jessy came in and stayed with me the rest of the night. At one point while she was asleep, I devised a troublingly detailed plan to… murder Father, and consequences be damned. My life was over anyway, what did I care?"

I felt Britt's hand tighten where it rested on my arm.

"I think the worst part was … well, you know how I am with overthinking things. I couldn't stop trying to reconcile my need for you to stay alive, even if it couldn't be with me… with the vile jealousy I felt when I imagined the lovely family you would have with a nice village girl. I made myself ill to my stomach, twice, thinking about that." I shuddered. "I knew resenting her was unfair, because who wouldn't love you?"

"I'm sorry." He slipped his other arm around to hug me. "If it makes you feel any better, I found the thought of you marrying—and bedding—some rich lord—well, in truth, _any_ man who wasn't me—so thoroughly sickening that… well, you recall how shamefully I behaved toward you."

I slipped my arm under his, and onto his chest, tracing my fingers over his breastbone. "I went so far as picturing who would be most likely to snap you up, and what all your children would look like. I was half mad at the thought of what a handsome wife Ruby Dyer would make you."

"Snap me up," he mused. "You make the village girls sound positively predatory."

"They are! There's been a queue of women, all of them waiting for you to wise up and notice them, for at least the last year and a half."

"You're being silly." He kissed my head again.

"I'm not!" I protested. "Did you truly not realize any of this? I think some of the girls in the village figured us out and told the others, because most of the unmarried ones stopped talking to me all of a sudden last summer. I can think of at least four who would happily stick a knife in my ribs if it meant they'd have a chance at you."

Britt squeezed me with both arms. "Well, I think I'm the only man in the village foolish enough to pursue a baron's daughter. But were you a villager—it's possible there would have been a few fights over who got to court you."

"Now _you're_ being silly." I leaned up and kissed him. "I love you, though."

He returned the kiss. "I love you, too. You should know, though, I would never have anything to do with Ruby. She's a malicious gossip, and I saw her kick a stray dog once when it followed her begging for a scrap of food."

"No matter. Once the dog-kicker was spurned, Lena Mosely, and Joss Marshall, and Sukey Bannister, and Mattie Fuller all would have fought over you like pigeons over a bread crust."

"Lena can't read or write, and Joss only talks about herself, and Sukey is dull, and Mattie… well, there's nothing terribly wrong with her, except that she isn't you and I'd likely never be able to overlook that deficiency."

Of all the things he'd said, _that_ made me cry again. I blinked and swiped my fingers over my cheeks to dry them, then slipped my hand back on his chest, focusing on his frail heartbeat.

"Os, I tell you truly… you could list a hundred more names and none of them would do. I think you ruined me for other women. It was you, or no one."

I hid my face in his chest.

"There's no one like you. Do you _realize_ how many times you have bossed me about pastry?"

"I have?"

He began listing. "The day you came for the brooch. Creek picnic. Pasture picnic. Late night pasture rendezvous—why you thought to bring food to that I'll never understand, although you _were_ right. I can think of _no_ other woman who would show up at her sweetheart's shop at closing time, with a basket on her arm containing every flavor tart that the bakery sells—sweet _and_ savory—and line them up on the store counter, and make him taste a bite of each one and rank them by preference so she'd always know for the future." Britt laughed. "You actually took notes, because knowing my favorite wasn't enough. What if they sold out of that one? You asked me more questions about my opinion on pie crust than Dad and I asked the man who sold us the new forge last year."

"Well, I was planning to be with you for all my days. I thought a lifelong companion ought to know that sort of thing. Did you mind me very much?"

"No." Britt's chest heaved with a single clipped little laugh. "Oh, how I love my pedantic little pastry-loving wife." He ruffled my hair. "And as I recall, we had a _very_ nice time afterward in the loft after we ate our fill of pie."

"Oh. That particular encounter doesn't rank for me because you wouldn't stop calling me your little tart and laughing at your own joke."

"I have no apologies for you on that count, woman. You of all people can't object to that. Anyway, If I recall correctly, by that evening's conclusion I had exhausted you so thoroughly that you were more than reconciled to your lot."

"Ugh. Well… at least I gave as good as I got."

"That you did." Britt smiled, a little wistfully. "That was a fun night." He tipped my chin up to look at him. "Want to hear _my_ favorite non-sex memory?" he asked. "It's a romantic one, too."

"Yes… wait, _no_ —is this the—"

"—yes, it is! You wouldn't stop putting food out for the cat you were convinced lived behind the smithy."

"Oh, gods, stop—shut up—"

"—and your cat turned out to be, something like…ten weasels instead."

"Stop exaggerating."

"Sorry. It was more like, twenty weasels."

I was afraid to hit him, so I rolled my eyes instead.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sorry you're feeling sensitive about the time you trained fifty weasels to hang about behind our shop demanding food and my dad was so pissed about it that he put out poison and you cried for a half hour because of all the poor dead longrats."

I laughed and snorted at the same time.

My reaction seemed to delight him beyond measure.

"Britt."

"What."

"I swear, you're the _only_ person who could make me laugh at his own deathbed."

"Os."

"What."

"Never forget that I won dying."

"I won't. Believe me that."

"Tell everyone. How in my last moments I made you laugh about dead weasels."

"When I'm able to stop crying long enough… I will."

"I'm going to mess up your hair probably. Don't get mad."

"I won't." I tucked my chin and rested my head on his chest again. We were quiet a spell while he ran his fingers through the snarls in my hair.

"Oswin?" He stopped and rested his hand on my back.

"What is it?"

"Please don't be upset."

I felt my scalp prickle with fear. "I won't, I promise. What is it?"

"I'm… so tired. And… my lungs hurt. I meant to stay awake all night, so we could see another morning together before saying goodbye. But… I don't think I can. I'm… really sorry."

It was a second before I could answer without choking. "It's all right. I understand. I do."

"Os."

"Mm. What?"

"I love you so much."

"I love you too." I took his hand and squeezed it.

"Os."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for listening to me. And for forgiving me."

I had to speak carefully to avoid crying. "Well. I know I haven't had the job for long, but I think those are some of the things a wife is supposed to do."

"You were a really good wife." I hated how faint and tired his voice sounded.

"You were a really good husband."

"I _was_ , wasn't I?" He smiled weakly.

"Britt, listen," I blurted, surprising myself, "I was trying so hard, to be brave, but now it comes to it, I'm not, I'm not brave—I can't bear thinking this is goodbye forever." I was babbling and powerless to stop my runaway words. "I _have_ to believe I can find you again one day. I don't know how it works, on the other side, but if you can… will you please… try not to forget me? I can't stand for this to be the end."

Britt nodded, the smallness of the gesture betraying his weariness. "I promise. I'll wait for you." He stroked my back. "Will you put your head on my shoulder again? I like that."

I did, my heart breaking anew to see how little his chest rose with each painful breath.

He smiled again and tucked his head over mine, kissing my hair.

"Britt?" I asked a little later, meaning to remind him one more time, how dearly I loved him.

But he was gone.


	9. He Kindly Stopped for Me

I lay awkwardly curled, my cadaverous right leg sapping the warmth from my still-living left, on the cot opposite the thing that used to be Britt. I hated the sight of it. I also couldn't look away.

I felt guilty, though not guilty enough to do anything about it, for letting the man in black shoulder alone the burden of washing the body and preparing it for whatever came next. It seemed like the sort of responsibility that should fall to a wife, but here I was letting a stranger attend to it. It was very unfair, without a doubt, to both Britt and the man.

The man was called Rolf, I had learned last night after the ugly panic following my horrified realization that Britt was dead—that whatever had made him Britt was gone, and whatever remained here on earth was merely a grotesque reminder of the hole his passing left in the world.

No quietly dignified widow was I.

Gripped with the sudden hysterical conviction that to remain in the cooling embrace of the husk that had once housed my dearest friend was to be myself entombed, I had screamed in terror, forgotten that one of my legs was near-useless, and pitched over the side of the cot.

At least on the ground I wasn't being cradled by a dead man.

When several people rushed to my aid, I realized belatedly that I'd forgotten to stop screaming. My surprise quieted me, but they didn't leave. Finally someone said, "Go get Rolf."

It was an odd, utilitarian name, I thought, which well suited this odd, utilitarian man.

Those people had moved me to this cot, where I lay now, watching Rolf as he patiently, solemnly, performed what I supposed must be death rites for Britt. I knew little about the business of dying, having been spared such concerns in my life before now, but it seemed entirely pointless, as Britt was so clearly gone and unable to benefit from such ministrations, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it. Who else mattered, in this equation?

But to interfere or object would have required energy I couldn't spare, so instead I lay there watching dully as he shepherded my husband to the next life.

"Oswin." I startled and looked up, befuddled. I'd been staring right at him, and I still hadn't noticed him finish.

"I think some sleep would do you good."

I shook my head.

"It's all right. No one will move him until you're ready."

For a long moment I wondered who _him_ might be, then I realized he was referring to the thing that wasn't Britt. He must think I was trying to sit some kind of vigil over it.

"You're still not recovered yourself. You've been through an incredible physical ordeal. It'll take time to regain your strength."

I shrugged my apathetic assent. I hadn't yet practiced walking with one leg completely incapable of conveying any sensory input from the ground, so even with the crutch Rolf still had to half carry me back to the cot I'd woken up in the day before.

Indifferent, I turned onto my side and let him drape a blanket over me, tucking it gently around my back to keep out drafts.

"I'll be right here. I won't leave you."

Like it made a goddamn difference.

I lay there, staring mostly unblinkingly at the canvas wall of the tent, until finally he shut his book with a sigh. "I'm not surprised you have insomnia. Let me give you something to help you sleep. Rest won't make you feel better, but it'll help you heal physically, and that's a start."

I was grateful to him, a little, for dispensing with the customary clichéd reassurances about how I wouldn't feel bad forever. He seemed to understand that I would, and that no words could change that.

"Come on. It will do you good to quiet your thoughts awhile."

He had a point. I might have promised Britt I wouldn't die, but sleeping my life away didn't sound like a bad alternative. I nodded.

I watched him take out a small case and combine some liquids in a cup, which he handed to me.

I drank.

"It'll take some time for you to feel it. But it should help."

I twisted back onto my side and watched him take his book out again. "Do you have anything that isn't Elminster?"

He glanced up at me. "I have a copy of Gaelin's _Songs of Silence_."

"I heard of that. It's… poetry? Will you… would you read to me?"

I felt stupid asking to be read to like a little child, but Rolf seemed glad I'd finally done something that nominally qualified as human interaction. He leaned down and got into his pack, taking out a smallish volume bound in green leather.

I closed my eyes and listened, waiting for oblivion to claim me. Rolf had a pleasant reading voice, with a cadence well-suited to verse. I was listening more for the sound of his voice than the words, anyway.

While he read I meandered in a sort of pleasant haze. Where Greta's potions had simply extinguished my consciousness, his sleeping drug dulled all the hard edges and left me still able to think a little. I liked this inviolable feeling of benign dispassion. Nothing had changed, I understood that, but the problem of Britt and the chasm he had left in my life had receded to a sort of abstract concern, as if it were a sad thing that had happened to someone I didn't know well. It was a relief not to care about that anymore. I opened my eyes, but looking at the early morning light made my whole body feel so heavy that I couldn't help closing them again after only a few seconds. They wouldn't stay focused, anyway.

My body was fighting toward sleep, but something was pestering the edge of my awareness and I couldn't work out whether it was important or not. If I fell asleep, I would certainly forget whatever it was.

I decided I did think it was important. "What…" I murmured, unable to open my eyes.

The reading stopped. That must mean he was listening. I tried to harness enough intelligence to formulate the thought I was trying to articulate. "The… the sleeping draught." My voice was as fuzzy and faraway as my thoughts. What about the sleeping draughts? His drug was doing its job, what was special about that? I realized I was stammering a stream of frantic, incoherent nonsense.

"Oswin?" He sounded far away.

I had to wake up a little so I could figure out what was so important about the damned sleeping draughts. Maybe if I could sit up I'd be less tired. I curled my hand around the edge of the cot and pulled myself up as hard as I could, but I must have done something wrong because instead I toppled over the side and fell like a stone. It didn't even occur to me to cry out.

Rolf swore aloud, and then he was at my side pulling me up into a supported sitting position.

I felt my eyes closing and my body starting to wilt in his arms. "Don't let me fall asleep," I begged. There was nothing but perplexity in his face, but he pressed a thumb against my forehead, speaking a few quick words, and I shuddered through a uniquely disagreeable sensation as every drop of blood in my body seemed to fight with the one next to it. "Oh, gods," I muttered, fighting the urge to retch. It took him a few minutes to finish, but I gritted my teeth and held on for the duration, my eyes watering and jaw aching.

"Sorry. That one's no fun." He put a hand on the small of my back and helped me sit up.

"What _was_ that?" I gasped as soon as I managed to stop gagging.

"A spell to forcibly purge poison from the bloodstream," he told me. "Now, do you want to tell me what in the nine hells that was all about?"

I tried to hug my knees to my chest, like I'd always done when I felt bad, but my wrecked leg made that too awkward, so instead I brought up my left leg, wrapped my arms around it, and rested my chin on my knee, willing my stomach to calm itself. "I don't know yet. It felt like I was on the edge of realizing something important… but I was too fuzzy and if I went to sleep I was going to lose whatever it was."

"You were frantic about something to do with the sleeping draughts."

"Oh. Yes… what you gave me felt different than what I took when I broke my leg. And that kept sticking in my mind. They're different somehow, right?"

"Quite different. The ones you took before were a true potion, a drinkable enchantment. Mine is a natural narcotic distilled from _papaver somniferum_." Here he looked up at me, as if curious whether I recognized the name.

"Sleeping poppy," I supplied.

"Good, I see you must be acquainted with Lans Gruenor's writings," he said approvingly. "Yes. My preparation is strong, as you observed, but not magical. Because it is chemical in nature, the onset is slower. As the name suggests, it facilitates somnolence, helps the patient rest. The potions, on the other hand, don't provide the same quality of restfulness. They simply suspend consciousness, along with all your other biological processes."

I worked through this. "Wait, does that mean they wouldn't have worked to—"

"—yes. Even the enormous dose you took wouldn't kill you. The duration just became cumulative. That is why most apothecaries sell those instead of the more efficacious natural preparation—they're safe."

"When you told me Kelemvor was the reason I lived, I thought that meant saving me from drugging myself to death."

He paused. "Not the draughts, no. But the leg was a mortal injury by itself. And exposure doesn't kill so quickly as people expect, but it does eventually."

I mulled this over, trying to decide what part of this might have seemed important to my drug-addled brain. "So the potions just make the body… stop?"

He nodded. "Uninjured, you could have lain down in the snow, drunk fifty if you could get them down fast enough, and then woken up in the spring and gone on your way little the worse for wear."

"Is that why I didn't waste away while I was asleep, like…" I didn't want to say aloud, _like Britt_ , but he seemed to take my meaning.

"Yes."

My thoughts were running too fast. "Did anyone else live? Besides me?"

"Thus far, besides you, the best outcomes have simply been those who haven't yet succumbed. No one I could truthfully term as having survived."

"You said before—your healing magic doesn't work. It accelerates the disease somehow. What does that mean?"

He thought for a second. "At its most rudimentary, divine magic hastens the body's natural processes. Healing that might take days or weeks to occur naturally is thus quickened, taking place close to instantaneously."

"But… is that predicated on the body being _naturally_ able to overcome what ails it, given enough time?"

Rolf was starting to get interested in my line of thought. "Yes, to a degree. So—"

I was getting interested, too. "—so would it follow then… if the contagion is too strong and… you said it was like a curse. If it—"

"—is resistant to divine power—"

He nodded intently as I interrupted him again. "—and if it preys on the body's natural processes … then wouldn't hastening those—"

"—speed the progression of the illness," he finished.

"We have to—will you—"

I didn't have to ask—he was already standing up and hauling me to my feet along with him. "Your clothes were ruined in the accident… let me find you something to wear so you won't freeze. Oh, and if you're not going to lie down and get some sleep, you at least need to eat something." He steered me to a seat on his chair and flagged down a young cleric passing by with a tray of food. "Here." He set a hunk of brown bread and a wedge of farm cheese on the bed stand and poured me a cup of wine from a skin at his belt. "Go slowly, or you'll be sick. It's been at least two weeks since you had anything but water."

I wasn't hungry, but I dutifully tore off a bit of bread and made myself chew it while I watched him go, unable to help recalling the only other setting in which I'd eaten bread and cheese in my smallclothes—with Britt, in the loft above the smithy. The queasy feeling in my chest warned me that I was nearing dangerous territory with that, so I tried to forget about Britt and put my mind to the problem at hand.

Unless it was godly intervention alone—and I hoped that wasn't the case because it would make my fledgling idea about the disease essentially worthless—there was some reason I had contracted the curse and survived. I wanted Rolf to come back so I'd have someone to help me make a list of things it might be—such as the sleeping draughts that might have counteracted the accelerative effects of priestly magic.

I'd been a list maker since the time Father had taught me to write, and it irked me to have no paper and pencil handy. I sighed and, remembering I was supposed to be eating something, tore off another bite of bread. Then I spotted the sheaf of papers sitting atop Rolf's pack, under the bed stand.

Maybe there was a blank page I could use, and a pencil. I looked around—if he was on his way back already, I would just ask. He wasn't. I eyed the papers, wondering how much he would mind if I took one. With all the ideas rolling around in my head, I might miss something important if I couldn't write them down.

I almost laughed at myself then—with all that had happened, I had an idea, which might be a good one, that I thought might save lives, and yet I sat here waffling over whether it was wrong to take a piece of paper that wasn't mine. If he didn't like that—well, it wasn't as if there was much left anybody could do to me at this point. Someone could strike me dead on the spot and I wouldn't care too much.

Not trusting my leg, I scooted the chair close enough to reach out my hand for the papers. They were on top of a fat book. I picked it up, curious. He hadn't mentioned any other books. On the front was written: _Expedition Ledger. Vol. 39._

I glanced around. No one was watching.

Looking at someone's private writings without permission was a very, very tasteless thing to do. I cracked the book open anyway after only a moment of hesitation.

It was a surprise to discover I still had the capacity to like something this much. I had never seen anything like Rolf's book—part diary, part sketch book, part… journal of natural philosophy. I didn't know what rightly to call it. Unable to help myself, I turned carefully through each leaf, glancing up frequently lest I be discovered at my trespass. He seemed to do a considerable amount of traveling. One page dated around harvest time contained an account of a murder trial in some village I'd never heard of—an innkeeper of about forty was accused of killing her husband. As I read through an interesting summary of the facts he had documented pertaining to the case, I realized with amazement that he had represented her at trial with the local lord—and successfully argued the case for her innocence, saving her life. An addendum at the bottom noted that he had heard after the fact that the man was later discovered to have been slain accidentally in a drunken fight with a neighbor.

The page directly opposite this contained an impressively realistic sketch of an unfamiliar variety of wild onion he had apparently found while sleeping out of doors and inspecting the flora near his campsite. The notation beneath said _sharp, bright flavor—redolent of garlic. tried in stew. greatly improves taste of woodchuck._ That made me almost want to smile.

On the same page as his woodchuck and onion stew, he detailed a method he'd observed somewhere which entailed the creative use of clerical cantrips to warm a small hothouse to grow fresh food in winter, along with a sketch of the structure and notations about which plants he thought best suited to such an application owing to their various nutritional qualities and ease of cultivation.

Before I remembered I wasn't going home again, I had the absurd impulse to begin copying down his notes about the hothouse so I could tell Father about it and see whether such an innovation might be helpful to the village next winter.

Knowing my time was limited, I skimmed through pages like the ones I'd already seen, all wonderfully different and lively—reams of accounts written in his firm script, of interesting medical cases and the spells and remedies he had employed for them—a receipt for an elixir to lessen the pain of childbirth; a narrative of an epic campaign of war between gangs of little boys at a spring festival; sketches of flowers, vegetables, herbs, and animals; a funny story about a farmer he met who believed his horse could understand the common tongue, which despite being amusing didn't expressly disagree with the man's conclusion; an occasional full page, beautifully rendered sketch of some person he had evidently found to be of interest. Frequently these diverse elements were juxtaposed, to interesting effect, on the sole basis of wherever he seemed to feel there was room to record something—on one page a receipt for a fever poultice was squeezed into the space between a sketch of a large bullfrog and a diagram depicting a method for coaxing water back to a dry well. Considering he was a cleric by occupation, religion didn't come up that often. When he had occasion to refer to his patron, Kelemvor received the same treatment others did—first initial only.

I would give almost anything, I felt, to curl up and lose whole days to reading this remarkable tome. It seemed to go back only a year or so, which made me wonder whether he really had penned thirty-eight more of these books, and if so, where they might be permanently quartered.

It occurred to me that while everything I'd seen so far was utterly engrossing, recent entries might be more pertinent to my immediate circumstances. I flipped through the pages until I spotted an entry that began:

 _dreamt night last, of dead girl in a dry gully. K requests aid. woke & breakfasted on cold squirrel before confirming direction & leaving._

This was followed by notations on his observations of the increasingly poor weather on his two day— _two day_?—journey to where I was. He had left off whatever he was doing and traveled two days to find me on the basis of a dream?

My mouth went dry as I read his account of my case:

 _human female, about twenty y/o. black hair, light-skinned. slim build. deceased._

I read that line several times and kept getting stuck at that word— _deceased—_ and finally kept going because obviously I was misunderstanding something.

 _primary cause of death unclear. body covered by snow drifts; took time to dig out. compound fracture of right tibia—broken brush on west side of empty creek bed suggests injury caused by fall. empty sleep spell bottles nearby—poss. suicide. death recent enough— reversible; elected not to dispel sleep effect to avoid addl. trauma to patient while repairing leg. complication—unfamiliar necrotic curse infecting bone at site of break. tried to salvage leg; unable. but avoided full amputation & limited spread of pestilence to limb only. _

My heart thudded uncertainly in my chest as I numbly went through more of what he had to say about me, barely able to take it in. After reviving my lifeless body and patching up my leg, Rolf had packed up my recently dead self, thrown me over his shoulder, and climbed out of the creek with me before proceeding into the nearby village with the intent of meeting with whatever local cleric served the area, in hopes of learning something about me and my circumstances.

Whereupon, he discovered that said cleric was already occupied with a full-fledged pestilence. Suspecting that might have been the source of the infection in my leg, he took me to the field hospital they'd assembled and settled in there to let me sleep off the potions I'd taken.

I turned the leaf over, and there was more written, but the breath caught in my throat when I saw a pencil sketch, so exquisitely realistic that we both might have risen from the page, of me and Britt lying in each other's arms on that miserable camp cot. He had captured perfectly the triumphant delight that always played across Britt's face when he teased me. It should have felt melancholic, or at the very least, intrusive, as the private anguish of the scene was evident, but instead it felt tender, affirming what Britt and I had shared as worthy of commemoration.

I choked back a half-laugh, half-sob when I saw what he'd written beneath: _a dispute concerning weasels._

I turned the page over and _did_ burst into tears when I saw a drawing of Britt that must have been improvised, for Rolf had never met him before he was sick, yet here he smiled mischievously up at me from the page, in fine health, with characteristic good humor. It was perfect, and the gnawing feeling in my chest surged at the unwelcome reminder of how terribly I already missed him. Until last night I'd always assumed heartache was a purely metaphorical notion, but now I understood the term must have been coined to describe the dull physical pain which had taken residence beneath my breastbone.

At the bottom of the page was written: _B, a young smith from village of Summer Crest._

I shut the book before I could glimpse anything else that made me bitterly regret my promise to Britt. I needed to put the journal back, and get myself under control before Rolf returned, and start that list, and try to do something useful with myself today, and meanwhile, to think as little as I could about him.

I set it on my lap with shaking hands and covered my face for a while as I worked to regain my composure. Finally I wiped my eyes—and almost jumped out of my skin when I looked up to see Rolf sitting across from me on the cot.

"I'm sorry," I stammered. "I'm so sorry. I was looking for paper and pencil, and I saw your book, and… I knew it wasn't mine to read, and I looked anyway." Not an hour ago I'd thought, what more could anyone do to me if I pissed them off? Now I realized the answer was—make my newly solitary state even more absolute. "I don't have anything to say in my defense. Only, I liked your drawings of roses, and onions, and pollywogs." I stared shamefaced at the ground. "And of Britt."

"If it was meant to be private," he said, "I would have put it away instead of leaving it out in plain view of someone whose curious disposition has already firmly asserted itself even in our short acquaintance."

"I—you're not—what? You—er—what?" I wiped my eyes again to cover my confusion. Was he saying he'd _left_ it for me to find?

"What did you think? Of what you read?"

"What do you mean?" I was still recovering from my surprise. He wasn't angry… and he wanted my editorial remarks?

"Did any of it interest you?"

I looked at him, puzzled. "I don't understand. You mean, apart from… all of it?"

One corner of his mouth twitched.

"Did you really make other books like that one?" I couldn't help asking. "And, what happened to the innkeeper who didn't murder her husband? And… did you ever try the hothouse—" I cut myself off. "Sorry. I'm asking too many questions."

Rolf waited a second to make sure I was finished talking. "Let me see. To the first, yes; to the second, I believe she brokered a business partnership with the baker next door and did well for herself in months since; third, not yet, but the theory behind it is sound so I anticipate it will work. Lastly, no such thing." He handed me a freshly sharpened pencil. "What was it you meant to write down?"

"Oh. Well… I was going to start a list of the facts about my case, so we could compare them with the others who lived and see whether there are any common threads… but then I found out I used to be dead and that eclipsed most everything else." I raised my eyes to meet his. "Um."

"Ah. Yes. I expected that would come up eventually." He leaned forward, steepled his fingers, and rested his chin on them, as if settling in for a long conversation that would require extensive thought. "And that you would have questions."

Only one, but I was afraid to ask lest the answer be too hard to bear.

"Maybe… later. Right now, can we start the list?"

He nodded and we set to work.


	10. To School an Intelligence

"I think it safe to say we've outdone Elminster for greatest foolery ever committed to paper," I said gloomily to Rolf after surveying our scattered writings pertaining to all our patient cases with growing pessimism. "This isn't useful at all."

"Obviously you haven't read his collected essays on Calimshan." Rolf ticked his teeth together thoughtfully, contemplating the canvas ceiling above us from where he lay on my cot, then slipped one hand out from behind his head and waved it at the papers on my lap. "This is just the beginning. Now we organize our notes and look for the common threads." He resumed his position, tapping one boot contemplatively against the other.

"How do we do that?"

"Depends on the situation. How would _you_ begin?"

He'd asked me some variation on that question several times already, and it felt strange. The notion that someone so much older than me, with an evidently vast acquaintance with the healing arts, would care what I thought about any of this was still a foreign one. Even Father, who had always praised me as being bright, had founded that approbation on my aptitude for taking instruction. It would never have occurred to him to prompt me for my independent reasoning on a situation—with the apparent expectation that I might arrive at some conclusion which differed from his, and furthermore that such a conclusion was of value.

"Um…" I thought carefully, then decided to skim our notes again.

"Stop that."

I frowned and looked up. "Stop what?"

Rolf propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me. "Take your pick—being cautious with your ideas, for one. Waiting to talk until you have a complete answer. Thinking I know and expect a right answer. Thinking a right answer exists. Thinking my opinion is important."

"Isn't it, though? You're the healer. Shouldn't you be telling _me_ what to do?"

"Excellent point. And yes, expertise does suggest a certain amount of authority on a subject. But it can also limit one's thinking in unpredictable ways. I've seen contagions before, certainly. But I haven't seen anything like _this_ before. I might very well make incorrect judgments about this illness because I assume it has certain characteristics in common with other diseases. In fact—I already have. It truly didn't occur to me that divine healing might kill the patients." He raised his eyebrows. "So… try again. Think aloud, if you need to, or write it out, if that's better. How do you arrange information to make sense of it? Visualize that."

"Well…" I chewed my lower lip. "I'm not hesitating like you told me not to," I added preemptively. "I'm just thinking for a second."

"Certainly."

"You made a list of all the people who got sick. Is that right?"

He nodded. "Before we started this."

"I think that's how I would begin, like that. May I write on it?"

Rolf made an affirmative gesture and I shuffled through the pages until I found the list of names written in his tight script. "Just a minute. I think I have to start putting it on paper before I know what makes sense to me."

He nodded. "That's fine."

"So, I have the list," I said after a moment. "Next I'd try to think of things about those people that might matter, which might affect the course of an illness." I looked at him uncertainly.

"Such as?"

"How old they are."

"Good start. What else?"

I thought about it. "What they do for a living?"

"Why would that matter?"

"Oh. Is that… not helpful?"

"Not what I said. What might someone's occupation tell you about them? About their health?"

"Um…" Unbidden, my mind ran to the smithy, which was unwelcome, but also made a certain amount of sense because I knew more about it than any other business in the village. Britt worked with fire, every day, and metal, and he was inside most of the time. He was strong, from his work. He probably breathed more coal smoke than most people. He didn't get much sun. He had such nice skin, for a man. He—

I realized I was holding my breath and released it shakily. I was going to be out of control, fast, if I couldn't think of something besides Britt. I looked down at the list and tried to focus.

"Oswin?"

I cleared my throat heavily without looking up. "Nothing. I'm just… going to begin and see where that gets us. Will you hand me that thing? What is it called?" I motioned vaguely.

Rolf reached over the side of the cot and passed me the thin, smooth-sanded piece of wood I'd indicated. It was a clever invention, with a spring mechanism at the top that secured sheets of paper onto the hard writing surface. "It hasn't really got a name yet. I suppose I think of it merely as a writing board."

"Well, if I think of something better I'll tell you." I clipped my list of patients to the board and set it on my lap. I penciled a vertical column in next to the list of names and wrote _Occupation_ at the top. "Some of this I can fill in from my head," I said, "but we might go faster if one of us writes and one of us reads things off."

"You're already writing. I'll read." I held the pile of notes out to him and he reached out and took them, rifling through them. "What do you have so far?"

"Occupation. Let me fill that in quick and then we'll do age." _Innkeep. Shopkeep. Cooper. Baker._ I sighed to see Cora's name among the afflicted. _Farmer. Stable groom._ I paused. _Housekeeper_ , I wrote, feeling a sad ache in my chest. Bonnie had been kind to me, and loyal, and her being sick also probably meant that Jessy wouldn't get my package. I forced myself to move on. _Tailor._ _Herbalist_. So we wouldn't be able to ask Greta about her sleeping draughts.

I licked my lips and continued, through peddlers, and wagon makers and cobblers and then… _Blacksmith_ , I wrote a bit unsteadily, once for Britt, and once for his father. I sucked in a slow breath and made myself keep going. _Miller. Turnip farmer. Barley farmer. Wheat farmer. Butcher. Bean farmer. Weaver._

"Gods," I muttered. "There must be seventy people on this list."

"There are likely many more than that," he warned me. "Those are only the patients who ended up here. There could be twice that number of sick—especially among rural folk who don't know that they're part of an epidemic."

I swallowed a lump in my throat. The village would never be the same, without all these people who gave it personality and made it home. Not that I had a home any longer, but still…

"This may sound callous," Rolf said. "But for this part of the process, I find it helpful to distance myself from thinking of patients as… people. That's best left for the bedside."

"Because it's too distracting?"

"Precisely. Although obviously you're permitted your difference of opinion."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, despairing at how preoccupied I was with thoughts of Britt, and how anxious I was to have something, anything to make me not think of him. But simply to see his name on the page and to write his occupation down had given me such a miserable jolt. How was I to be any help, or to think clearly, if I couldn't even read his name to myself?

I realized it had been a moment since I'd last spoken. "Sorry. I'm thinking."

"Never apologize for thinking," Rolf admonished me pleasantly. He paged through our notes, making small addendums here and there while I gathered my thoughts.

"So…" I said finally. "Is there a way to not think of them like people? I've known most everyone in the village all my life. And that's good, sort of, but it's also bad because it means my feelings about them will be in the way." I looked down at the page and pointed at Cora's name.

Rolf set the papers down and regarded me with undivided attention.

That was a habit of his I was really beginning to like. I wasn't accustomed to anyone but Britt and Jessa seeming so genuinely interested in what I thought.

"When I see her name I don't think female, baker, thirty-something. I think how she makes my favorite lemon tarts, and has the nicest smile, and how I'll miss her terribly if she doesn't make it." I paused uncertainly. "Right? Is that what you meant? About distraction?"

"That is precisely what I meant," he said after considering my question. "Though if there's a way to excise one's feelings about people for purposes of analysis, I don't know of it. I expect for most of us it's one of those essential qualities that comes along with being a person." He fiddled the pencil between his thumb and forefinger. "Are you familiar with the term _recusal_?" he asked. "Verb form, transitive, being to _recuse_ oneself? I needn't bore you if you are."

I shook my head. "I don't think so. Different from _refusal_? Are they related?"

"Yes, they spring from the same etymological root. To recuse oneself is to—having recognized one's inability to approach a situation objectively—voluntarily remove oneself from acting on that situation. Does that make sense?"

"Yes."

"It has applications in other professions as well—but in mine, it means generally that for a physician to be too close to a patient often works to the patient's detriment. Not in simple cases, obviously, but in situations, particularly deadly ones like this, that require some careful, rational thought. You are right to think that your feelings will cloud your judgment. It's unavoidable."

I nodded, trying to stave off my disappointment. He was right, of course, I saw that plainly enough. I wondered if he would let me look at his travel journal while he worked on this. Perhaps he'd stay nearby so I could help answer an occasional question. That wouldn't be so bad.

Rolf studied me, scratching idly at his jawline where his whiskers were beginning to turn scraggly. "Why so glum at that, Oswin?"

"I guess I was feeling a little disappointed," I confessed. "I hoped I could be more help, that's all."

"Well, the conversation isn't over." He studied me. "To acknowledge one's lack of objectivity isn't easy. People don't like to think of themselves as biased. So you saved us a lot of time by accepting that and not taking it as a personal indictment on your character."

He waved a hand. "But I digress. I was explaining recusal—and part of that explanation is that the upholding of professional ideals is all very good when one is in the city and can easily find another healer or obtain the necessary resources for the patient's care. But, when other arrangements for care aren't available, one must simply make do."

Rolf sat up on the cot, swinging his legs over the side and planting his boots on the ground. "What I'm saying, Oswin, is—who the hell else can do this work, if not us?" He looked at me expectantly.

I looked around. Five clerics, frantically busy, and him, and me, and all those patients. "What do we do about the problem of bias?"

He rested his hands on his knees. "We either work with it, and try to be aware of its presence and to allow for it in our decision making—or, if possible, find a way to compensate for it. You have extensive knowledge, which I expect will be tremendously useful, of these people. You also know you can't look at them with the necessary detachment for evaluating their cases on a strictly factual basis. What shall we do to counteract this problem?"

I had a feeling he already had some idea, but wanted me to work it out for myself. "Just a minute," I said automatically, although Rolf already seemed to have figured out for himself that my silences were generally a product of me turning something over in my head. It was a nice contrast from Father, who had the habit of breaking my concentration by prompting me for a faster answer when he felt I was taking too long.

Rolf turned back to our notes while I thought things over.

"I think I have something," I said a while later. "But it'll mean some extra work copying things down on paper, and it'll have to be you, not me… is that all right?"

"I expect so. Tell me your idea."

"All right, so, if bias comes from knowing the patients too well… then I need a way to look at their facts but not know who they are. So, without their names or occupations."

"Good. Go on."

"So, what if we finish what I started from your list—finish thinking of the different factors, and I tell you everything I know about them before we try to think what any of it means. But then when we're completely done recording the facts, instead of trying to use the list, what if we give each person a number?"

He nodded. I thought I saw approval in his eyes, and began to think perhaps my idea might have some merit after all.

"You should be the one to number the patients, so I won't know them. It won't matter if you do."

"And why is that?"

"Because you're not the one with bias." I was gaining momentum. "Then—we make a new list, with numbers only, listed with all the facts for each patient."

"Good." He paused. "Are you one of those people who thinks with your hands? Because you looked like you were weaving an invisible tapestry just now."

"Oh." I felt my cheeks redden. "I guess I do that sometimes."

"I wasn't criticizing. I was just curious to know what you were thinking when you did that."

"I suppose… I was picturing in my head the best way to look for the common threads, like you said. In a list they're all just there on the page. So…"

"So…?" he prompted after I didn't go on.

"What if we tore off each patient line onto its own strip of paper? Then we can lay them out and sort them however we want, change them around, really see it."

He frowned.

"Is that a bad idea?" I asked reflexively. "Does this… waste too much paper?"

"No, none of that. You're just reacting to my thinking face. You have your air weaving and your vacant silences, and I have my disapproving frowns."

"I have vacant silences?" I asked with surprise.

"Oh, you look positively vacuous when you're thinking. Every intelligent word out of your mouth is a delightful surprise." The words might have been insulting, but they were delivered with a smile that dimpled his ruddy, sun-weathered cheeks, as if this were a private joke just we ugly thinkers shared.

Incredibly, I felt myself smile in return, even if just a little.

"Judging by how frequently you feel compelled to explain or apologize for these interludes, this habit of yours must have been objectionable to your previous teachers."

"I guess my Father—" I began, then changed my mind. "I didn't know that. I'll try to remember."

If he was curious about my aborted reply, he didn't let on. "Oh, don't try to change it. You probably can't, and anyway, it's useful. Your aspect of profound stupefaction is what tells me when not to interrupt you."

I laughed, then cut myself off, equally surprised and horrified at myself, that I would laugh, on today of all days. My eyes flooded.

"Try not to think that way," Rolf told me, correctly guessing my mind. "You _will_ laugh, at times, without warning or intent, and it's no betrayal to him. Nor is it a sign that you didn't care enough, or that your way of grief is somehow wrong, or inadequate." He reached for his pack and drew out a clean rag about the size of a handkerchief, passing it to me. "Let me tell you something. Grief is a miserable, heinous, ugly thing. And while some like to pretend otherwise, in my experience most people never truly get over a loss like what you experienced today."

I wiped my eyes, and then wiped them again, and again, as I listened.

"Over time," he said, "you will find a way to make room for this grief in your life. Or, perhaps it's more accurate to say you'll find a way to make room for a life in your grief. It's not a straight path. One day, though it feels impossible now, you will have times when you feel nearly normal again. But those normal-feeling times will be punctuated with moments, or days, or weeks in which you feel exactly as you do now. It isn't a setback, or a failure. It's simply the way the mind works." He crossed his arms and sighed, drumming his fingers on one elbow. "The cruel trick is that those hard times are generally brought on by things that feel trivial—a smell, a flower, a glint of sunlight—any little thing might make you think of him. Just know, the smallness of the thing doesn't invalidate the sentiment it evokes."

After a moment of silence that I used to wipe my eyes a few more times, he spoke again. "Nothing I say will change the fact that now it feels wrong to laugh or smile when you're 'supposed' to be sad, and that conversely, in the future it will feel equally wrong to cry when you're 'supposed' to be better. But, try to understand with your rational mind that it isn't wrong. It'll make it easier to forgive yourself those feelings. All right?"

I nodded.

"You don't look stupid at all right now," he observed, as if in disapproval, though the humorous twitch at the corner of his mouth gave him away. "Were you even listening?"

I liked him very much just then, for defying the sobriety of the moment and giving me a quick hand up out of the well I'd fallen into.

"We were discussing," he resumed without additional preamble, "your idea of tearing off strips of paper for each patient."

"And you were thinking on it. Except that I interrupted you."

"Oh, yes. I haven't ever done it before, and I think we should try it. Let's get started, shall we?"

∞—∞—∞

Two hours later, we had some seventy-odd numbered pieces of paper, and a makeshift table made from a couple of boards set over two cots, at which I was presently seated.

"First let's look for single-factor patterns," Rolf suggested, looking up from the writing board. "See if a significant number of patients seem to share any particular trait. How many men infected, versus women?"

I sorted the slips into two piles. "Thirty-eight women." I counted the second. "Thirty-four men."

"Nothing unexpected there. How about age? Infant to ten years, eleven to twenty, and so on."

This took a bit more sorting. "Baby to ten—eight. Then going up in increments of ten—fifteen, eighteen, fifteen, eight, and eight again. So, more younger people are sick."

"Do you think that's a potential causal factor? Or does it simply reflect the age composition of the village in general?"

I considered that. "The second, I think. I wish we had a list of everyone in the village so we could look at the ones who didn't get sick, too."

"That would be helpful," Rolf agreed, "but I find that wishing for things one can't have is generally an unproductive use of time." He skimmed the list. "I don't see any patterns in terms of occupation, either. Indoor or outdoor, town versus rural, working with animals, exposure to materials, nothing."

While he muttered to himself about that, I sorted the slips into piles based on any other thing I could think of or infer from the other information on them. I started with residential location, sorting them by what part of the village they lived in, poring over the piles and wracking my mind for anything useful. After a while I gave up on that and tried sorting by the other things we'd written down—religion, married or unmarried, number of children—until I ran out of factors.

I sighed and swept all the slips into a single pile again. I'd begun all this by thinking about the unusual characteristics of my case—the sleeping draughts, for a start. But I'd also broken my leg. Oh, and I'd died. I supposed nobody else had that in common with me.

"Anything over there?" he asked after some time had passed.

"No."

"What did you look at?"

"Patron deities. Sources of drinking water. Even stupid things that shouldn't matter. Married or unmarried. Number of children."

"Drinking water? What made you think of that? We didn't list that one."

"No, we just listed where they lived. But I read once that a contaminated water source can spread sickness. I guessed which well, based on the part of town they worked in and their occupational category."

"And what did you find?"

"Nothing. Northeast—eight. Southeast—fifteen. This time of year, the creek is dry—they probably used the well on the east end of the village. Then the two western areas of town were a total of twenty-seven people, who all likely used the well near the greengrocer. There were twenty-two who didn't live in the village at all and probably got their water from farm wells or streams."

"Anything special about the northeast area? Only eight cases there."

"I think it's just that there aren't as many houses there."

"Ah. Well, all the same, good use applying something you read. You're indeed correct that tainted water can cause sickness."

"Not in this case, apparently."

"No, perhaps not." Rolf scratched at his whiskers again. "Not surprising. I didn't expect our task to be that simple, especially since we don't have the rest of the village for comparison. We should evaluate combinations of factors and cross reference those with outcomes."

"Outcomes?"

"Dead or alive," he clarified. "Survival times."

"Oh." I nodded.

He went back to looking over the list and reviewing our notes, and I sorted the slips of paper into two piles—the thirty-three deceased patients in one, thirty-nine living in the other. I pulled the one with deceased patients back over to me and began rummaging through it, idly pushing pieces of paper around on the table.

Of the only eight children on the list of patients, five were already dead. That was sad. Three had lingered on for six days. I pulled over the other pile and picked out the surviving patients under age ten. The longest any of the three living children had been sick was only three days. I wondered if we would find an answer in time to save them.

I stared at those slips a while longer, then recalled that the other group with eight patients was those over fifty. The youngest, and the oldest. It made sense that those were the two smallest groups of the sick, since they were also the two smallest age groups in the village as a whole.

I separated out all eight slips for the patients over age fifty and looked at them. Only one dead, compared to the five children. And that person had lived thirteen days, compared to six.

That seemed odd. But perhaps the adults had gotten sick more recently. I looked over the slips of the other patients in that category. Not so. Seventeen days, twelve, sixteen, fifteen. They were hanging on over twice as long as the children.

Puzzled, I again sorted my slips back into piles of deceased and living patients, lining up each group in ascending order by age. Finished, I surveyed the deceased list with a growing sense of befuddlement. Maybe this was the sort of pattern Rolf meant us to find—of the thirty-three dead, fully twenty-four of them were under age thirty. And only _three_ were over forty. I ruminated on this a little longer before turning to the slips representing the patients who still lived.

Thirty-nine people. I chewed my lower lip as I looked them over.

Rolf made a contemplative sound. I looked up, but he was still looking down at the list of patients, frowning thoughtfully. "Did you find something?" I asked.

"No. Maybe." He glanced at me. "What about you?"

"I don't know yet. Will you… come look at this?"

He got to his feet and stood looking over my shoulder. "Take me through your thoughts."

"These are the people who died. Almost half are young—under twenty. And three-quarters are under thirty. Only three who died were over forty."

"Hmm. Meanwhile, I thought I noticed an inverse trend."

"What's that?"

"I was reviewing the patients who lived, looking at what they had in common."

"And they were all older?"

He nodded, studying the slips on the table in front of me. "Tell me how you got here."

"Well… I noticed there were five children in the deceased pile, and then I remembered there were only eight children in the total patient population. So, more dead than alive. I thought that was very sad. And then I recalled that there were also eight patients in the over-fifty group. But when I looked at them, only one had died. And they were living longer."

I looked up at him.

Rolf nodded. "Keep going."

"After that I started looking at people in their teens and twenties. More of them were dying than the other age groups, and dying faster. It just doesn't make any sense. It should be the weakest people—the very oldest, and the very youngest—dying first. Right?"

When Rolf didn't answer, I looked up again to see him frowning again as he scanned the bits of paper I'd lined up. I decided not to interrupt. "I agree," he said after a while. "The strongest are dying most quickly. Look how long the oldest patients are hanging on. Over two weeks, some of them. And only five of the adolescent group have made it to eight days." He motioned to several of the slips.

"Just like the healing spells. Whatever would normally help a person get better—it's killing them instead." I frowned. "But what does that mean? It seems important, but I don't know what to do from here."

"We look for outliers."

I was about to ask what an outlier was, but Rolf was on a roll.

"We found a trend. The young and strong, and those who have been helped with divine magic, seem least resistant to the illness. To find out why, we look for the people whose cases don't fit that profile—anyone who should have died quickly and didn't, and conversely, anyone who shouldn't have died, but did anyway."

"Like this one?" I picked up a slip of paper and handed it to him. Male, age twenty, deceased, but had somehow survived nine days longer than anyone else his age—except me. I had a feeling I knew exactly who it was.

Rolf looked at the paper, then set his hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic squeeze. "Yes. Like this one." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Chin up, Oswin. You've done well. Let's find the others."


	11. A Thing With Feathers

"No. Absolutely not." Thalia gave her head a single firm shake.

"But Thalia—"

"—I said no. I appreciate your efforts, and I don't doubt your good intentions. But you can't truly have expected me to go along with this."

"All right, I understand it's… unconventional," I allowed. "But it—"

"—You're asking me to let you freeze a patient to death! That's not unconventional, it's unethical! Not to mention completely inhumane."

We both turned appealingly to Rolf, as if willing him to convince the other.

"This is her parish," he said to me. "It's her decision. If you know you're right, convince her."

"You agreed with me, though," I objected.

"True. I agreed with your reasoning. But my opinion isn't the one that matters here. Hers is."

I looked at him in surprise, feeling suddenly unsure. What if my theory was wrong?

Thalia sighed. "Lady Oswin. I appreciate the fact that you're trying to salvage something from all this tragedy. You've suffered a terrible loss, and I can't tell you how much that saddens me. But sometimes we have to accept what is and that there is no answer."

"Thalia… it's just… will you listen?" I pleaded.

Thalia gave me an aggrieved look. "I don't need more information to know that killing patients by exposure is a violation of every godly oath I've ever sworn!"

"But… has anybody else recovered, apart from me? I drank two bottles of sleeping draughts and was covered over by snow when Rolf found me two days later. And…" I swallowed hard and forced myself to say his name without crying. "Britt was out in the snow overnight and he lived longer than anybody else our age."

Thalia frowned. "Yes, but you lived because of Rolf. And Britt was hanging on because he wanted to see you one more time."

"But you were there, right? You saw that the healing magic makes it worse? So what if me living wasn't to do with that? And… he lived seventeen days. That's almost twice as long as anyone else our age or younger."

"It's still only two cases. That's not good enough."

"That's not all, though. The only people who have done well all had some kind of weakness that should have made it harder for them to survive. They shouldn't be able to fight it off like a healthy person, but instead they've hung on longer. Lena Cooper—actually, no, I'll show you instead. Come on." I fumbled with my crutch and limped back toward all our slips of paper, which were tacked down on our makeshift table with sewing pins to prevent them being carried away by a draft.

Thalia followed, looking unhappy. I glanced at Rolf, but his face was calmly neutral.

I had the peculiar feeling that I was being tested in some way—and that this was why he hadn't stepped in to help me convince Thalia—though I couldn't think why he would test me, or for what merits I was being judged. I also couldn't fathom why it mattered so much to me that I pass muster. I'd known the man barely two days, but the idea of him finding me lacking was unbearable.

So instead of complaining, or begging him to help me explain things, I led them to my table and showed Thalia the papers. "Each of these bits of paper is one of our patients. It lists how long they survived, and other facts about that person." I pointed to the left side of the table, where I'd tacked the youngest patients in order of age. "Here are the eight patients under ten. Most of them got very sick, fast, and died quickly. Five died. Of the remaining three alive, two have been sick two days and don't seem to have much longer. Lena, though. She's still alive after eight days. Why?"

Thalia shook her head.

"Well… you know as well as I do she's been sickly since she was a baby. She gets fever at least twice a year. Shouldn't she have succumbed already? But look. The other two—only two days sick—are worse than she is."

I pointed at the next column of slips. "Fifteen patients between ten and nineteen. Seven dead, five living. Of the living, none except Reed Miller has been sick longer than three days. But he's been hanging on for twelve." I tapped my finger on the slip of paper representing him. "He's not sickly, like Lena, but he was cleaning the mill wheel and got a bad case of poison ivy two days before he got sick. He was so miserable that you gave him some sleeping draught to make him more comfortable. The same sleeping draught that _I_ took. He's spent most of his time here unconscious. But I heard you say this morning he took a turn for the worse. Did you stop giving him the draught?"

Thalia nodded slowly, her eyes intent on the paper, and chewed at her lower lip. From her unsettled expression, I had a feeling I might be gaining traction.

"Who else was given sleeping draughts?" I asked, though I knew the answer already.

"Bonnie. Her cough was so violent I thought it might be kinder to keep her out."

"Thirteen days. Still alive."

"Who is this?" Thalia pointed to a piece of paper. "Patient eight. Female, nineteen."

I consulted our notes. "Jenny Mason."

"She doesn't fit your explanation. I didn't give her anything. She was young, and perfectly healthy all her life. By your definition, she should have sickened quickly and died like the others. But she made it eight days. I still think these are coincidence. I know why you want to believe this is—"

"—but where was Jenny's bed?" I asked her. "Up until right before she passed?"

"At the front, why?"

"Near the door… where she was uncomfortably chilly? She wanted to be moved somewhere warmer, if I remember correctly."

"Yes…"

"What happened after she was out of the cold?"

"Her cough got worse. She was gone within the day." Thalia looked troubled.

I pointed to three other adolescent patients who had lasted six days each, and glanced at my notes to confirm who they were. "Lilly. Gemma. Marcus. Where were their cots?"

She knew I knew the answer already, but she gave it anyway. "Near the tent door."

I pointed to the three who survived less than three days. "Len. Midge. Darren. How close were they to the fire?"

"All right, it does seem like a trend, I'll grant you that." Thalia sighed. "But what you're proposing still goes against my every instinct as a healer. I just… morally I can't give you what you want. I'm responsible for these people."

"So am I, though."

"Not in the same way, Lady Oswin."

My heart sank with disappointment.

"After you explained, though, I'm willing to consider some of it," she said, in a way I knew was meant to be encouraging. "The sleeping draughts won't be actively dangerous to anyone, even if they don't ultimately work. It's possible there's something to your idea that the body fighting the illness is somehow giving the disease strength." She put her hand on my arm. "But we can't pack anyone in snow like you're asking. That would surely kill them. You see that, right?" Thalia rubbed my arm comfortingly, looking pained.

She was trying to let me down easy, but it didn't matter. Rolf and I had put so much effort into all this—and I was _sure_ we were right. What else could I possibly say to convince her?

"I was out in the freezing cold for two days," I pleaded.

"You also took two weeks worth of sleeping draughts—which prevented the cold from killing you. And I'm not sure you're a good example—your leg and the fact that you were healed make you too different from the others."

"But Britt wasn't injured, and he didn't drink any sleeping potions, either," I argued. "Why didn't he die from the cold? Shouldn't he have, if you're right?"

"Lady Oswin," Thalia began. "You—"

"—what if the healing magic on me only worked because of the sleeping draughts and the cold?" I blurted. "What if those stilled my body enough that the healing didn't speed up the disease?"

She shook her head uncomfortably. "It's impossible to say what exactly it was in your case that let you recover. Maybe you didn't even have the same illness. I'm not saying this to be cruel… but can you please try to understand why I can't let you experiment on my patients?"

I was almost in tears. "Please, Thalia. They're our patients, too. Can we ask someone if they'd be willing to try it? Someone already really sick, maybe? Someone who hasn't got much longer?" I felt my eyes brim over and blinked hard to dry them as much as I could. "What if we can save them? _Please_."

She didn't answer.

I tried to settle on something, anything else I could say to convince her. "And, I was in the snow for two overnights. It's afternoon now, it's not nearly as cold as it was then. Cold, but the warmest part of the day right now. So maybe—"

I left off as I saw the sad expression in her eyes. She was going to say no again, I could tell. I wanted to look at Rolf, but I was sure if I did I wouldn't be able to stop myself from starting to blubber with disappointment. I should stop pressuring her, I knew, because she clearly felt bad enough already about continuing to turn me down.

I saw our local brewer raise his arm weakly and wave in our direction from his cot.

"Thalia." I gestured behind her. "Delger is asking for you."

She turned, unmistakably relieved for an excuse to end the conversation.

I set down my crutch and sank to a seat on my cot, fighting the desolation threatening to engulf me. While we'd worked, while my mind was occupied, it was easier to keep my fear at arm's length. Now it rushed in, and I had little defense against its encroach.

Britt was gone. And soon, so would be probably a quarter of my village. More, even. I wished Rolf would go away so I could unleash my disappointed sorrow with the utter lack of maturity that felt appropriate to the situation. Why had I so stupidly tried to pray, down there in the cold? If I hadn't done, he wouldn't have come for me, and I might be with Britt right now, in a place my parents could never reach us. I felt a lump rise in my throat as I stared wretchedly at the ground, unable to look up at Rolf and confront my total failure to save anyone, despite how hard we had worked.

I had _no_ right, I knew that well enough, to think I deserved some kinder, less final outcome than everyone else who had lost a loved one to this sickness. But since seeing Rolf's book, and learning of the miracle he had worked on me after I'd been dead a full two days, a tiny part of me had reserved a stupid, vain shard of hope that perhaps the goodbyes Britt and I had spoken didn't have to be so permanent after all.

I knew nothing of how such powers worked. Rolf had given me no indication that such a thing was a possibility in Britt's case, and his gracious speech yesterday about the ugly nature of grief gave no appearance that he thought of our parting as anything but eternal and everlasting. But that conversation had taken place outside the context of today's revelations—before we had any tangible expectation that a cure might exist. And were I in his place, I would take careful pains not to kindle any false hopes that might never be actualized.

"Oswin."

I looked up, trying to rearrange my face into something more palatable than whatever irremediable sorrow currently inhabited my features.

Rolf took a half step toward me, then stopped. Something in his posture gave me the impression of contemplation. Puzzled, I looked up and followed his gaze to Thalia, where she stood at Delger's bedside. Delger was talking to Thalia, glancing frequently in my direction.

Rolf reached down, offering me a hand up. "Up you go. Thalia is feeling the weight of her responsibility to your people too heavily to give it a try, but that might not matter. I think you may have convinced our first volunteer."

I let him pull me to my feet, and stood there dumbly, staring at Thalia and Delger until Rolf handed me my crutch. "Let's go."

He let me have the lead, though I must have been annoyingly slow as I limped my way over to them.

Delger's voice was gravelly as he spoke to Thalia. "Well, I want to know about it. Lady Oswin is—"

"—It's not—" She left off as we approached, not looking especially glad to see us.

Delger shifted his gaze from Thalia to me. "Tell me about this cure I heard you talking about."

I looked uncertainly at Rolf. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged slightly. So I was on my own for this, too. I felt my heart pounding. It seemed in that moment that everything—the fate of our village, Britt, the rest of my whole life—rested on this conversation.

"Well, I can't say yet if it's a cure," I admitted. "That's why Thalia is right to be worried about it. It might not work. It could kill people instead."

Thalia looked surprised that I hadn't taken advantage of his interest to make my idea sound less dangerous.

"But?"

"But we have a theory about how the illness works."

"Which is?"

"It seems like the disease spreads faster, the better the person's body is at fighting it," I explained. "The reason they haven't used any healing magic on you and the others is that it kills people faster. The people who lived longest were either exposed to cold, or were given a sleeping draught. Both of those things slow the body down. That would normally hurt a person's chances at getting better, if they were sick. But so far the people who have lived longest had one of those. And... the only patient to recover so far had both."

"So what's your idea, then?" Delger croaked.

I hesitated. There was no dressing it up. "Knock the patient out with sleeping draughts, then pack their unconscious body with snow. Leave them that way a few hours and then let them wake up naturally as the draught wears off. Or, it's also possible that this makes it possible to let healing spells work as they're supposed to." I paused. "And it's also possible that Thalia is completely right and all of that is just a coincidence. It could just kill the patient."

"Say I tried—" He broke off into a spate of coughing. "—your cure. You're saying it might kill me?"

"Yes."

"And if I didn't. What are the odds I live if we do nothing?"

I looked at Rolf and Thalia. Neither of them spoke.

"Not very good," I told him.

"I want to try it."

"Are… you sure?"

"Yes. You're a sensible girl," he rasped. "Trustworthy. You take after your grandfather. You didn't try to trick me by making it sound better with pretty words, or try to bully me into it just because you're highborn. We'll do it your way."

My heart skittered nervously. "If Thalia agrees," I said finally.

She frowned and looked away. Then, after a long pause, she nodded curtly. "Fine. Do it."

That was that. If Delger died from the treatment, it would be my fault. His choice, maybe, but my doing. I looked into his watery blue eyes. "Are you truly sure?"

"Yes. But if I don't survive this nonsense, I want you to say my funeral rites."

I looked at Rolf. He nodded minutely, enough for me to understand that he would show me what to do, if it came to that. "If you don't… then I guess that's the least I owe you."

∞—∞—∞

Thalia paced restlessly, her unease mirroring mine, as the three of us tried to decide how much sleeping elixir to give Del, who had been moved to a chilly spot near the front of the hospital pavilion. Too much wouldn't kill him, but it might waste time, not to mention medicine we might need for other patients. "I was out two days, right?" I finally said to Rolf. "By the time you got there."

"Yes, although… your case was a little different to the others. Your leg. The illness didn't run its usual course."

"Oh." I wanted to ask, but was afraid to—what if my broken leg drawing the sickness away from the rest of my body was the only reason I'd lived at all? What if we were wasting time and medicine on a wrong hunch that I'd arrogantly fought for because I needed so badly to serve my own private motives?

Thalia interrupted my interior repudiations with a suggestion. "If your guess is correct, that the sleeping potion and the cold both serve to prevent the body from defending itself the way it normally would fight a contagion, then it might be that each patient requires a slightly different approach. Delger might need less than a person your age." She nodded toward me. "We'll start with a normal night's dose and see how it goes."

"Is it better to take him outside, or to keep him in bed and bring the snow inside?" I asked. Either way, I doubted I had the strength, ambulatory status, or dexterity to help them very much. Plus, I had nothing to wear in the cold, and it seemed like a bad time to put anyone to the trouble of finding me something more substantial than the thin tunic and leggings Rolf had found for me yesterday. I didn't even have any shoes—down in the creek bed Rolf had slashed my boot open from ankle to calf in order to peel it off without further injury to my leg.

"More efficient, I think, to take him outside. Less to and fro, not to mention the snow will stay frozen longer." Rolf tapped a finger on his chin. "Your boots are ruined, and the cloak you were wearing is a bloody mess, but we can remedy all that easily enough. Thalia—if you'll give Delger his first dose of the sleeping draught and get a couple of the others to help you situate him outside, I'll get Oswin a little better outfitted for the cold."

"Should we give the others a little of the sleeping draught as well?" I suggested timidly. "Do you think it might buy them some more time while we see if Delger gets better? We don't have to do anything extreme—we could just dose them a bit and keep the hospital a little cooler."

Thalia glanced at Rolf, then gave me a tight nod of acquiescence. "It can't hurt, at that. I'll get that started. She picked up the bottle of sleeping draught and a large spoon and set out across the tent.

"That's something you'll be able to help with, if you care to," Rolf remarked.

I looked gratefully at him, relieved that I wouldn't be automatically relegated to loitering uselessly inside, where I would be of no benefit to anyone and would have nothing to do except fret over whether the cure would work.

He gave me a long, speculative look, making me wonder how much he had guessed of my last half hour of anxious broodings. "Come on. Let's get you squared away." He jerked his head in the direction of my cot.

"You probably already know this," I blurted as I followed him, "but that expression comes from the field of mathematics. Whenever my father says it he means it like you do, to set things right, except that I always picture it literally in my head, folding someone into a square shape"—I was babbling, and seemingly powerless to stop myself—"because I think if Father could make everything, or everyone, into a perfect square that always fit in its right place—" I ran out of air and took a nervous breath. "—then he would," I concluded anticlimactically, realizing there was almost no point to anything I had just said.

I swallowed heavily and fell silent, unable to think of anything else to say, and knowing that awkward little speech must have made me sound equal parts insane and stupid. It also made my family sound ridiculous. Which it was, but it was vulgar to draw attention to that fact. Why had I brought up Father, of all people?

"Did you read that in Rankin's _Etymologies_?" Rolf inquired, instead of pointing out my obvious intellectual and emotional deficiencies.

"No, I don't think I know that book. I don't remember where I learned it." I felt a cool sweat spring up on my brow. What was _wrong_ with me? I'd gotten what I wanted, hadn't I? Not twenty minutes ago I'd been gripped with total desperation because I thought we would never get to learn whether our idea actually worked to make anyone better. Now we were one step closer to knowing more about how to save people, and instead of being relieved, I felt like throwing up. Was this how Thalia felt before? Responsible for the fate of an entire village?

Except Thalia didn't have a secret selfish agenda informing her every decision.

Rolf stopped abruptly and turned. "Would you like to tell me what's bothering you?" he asked gently.

Gods, why was he being so _nice_ to me? He had no idea what an unforgivably self-centered, small-minded person I was.

"Can we go see Britt?" I heard myself ask in a piteously tiny voice. But I couldn't hear his answer over the sound of my pulse roaring in my ears. With a rush of comprehension I understood exactly what was wrong with me. Rolf had halted the curse's progression by trapping it in my leg, but we'd both been around sick people for days now, and I'd lain there with Britt as he actually died from the thing. That explained why I felt so clammy and cold, but still damp with sweat, and why my heart was threatening to gallop out of my chest, and why I was so hyperaware of the physical mechanics of breathing right now that I couldn't actually make myself inhale.

I couldn't stop staring at the packed earth floor beneath our feet. I was going to suffocate and die of this curse right here, and I would return to this very dirt and cease to exist. And after me so would Rolf and Thalia and everyone from our village, and their fates would be my fault for placing my own greedy wishes before my responsibility to our people.

Rolf touched my shoulder and I thought he might be saying something, but then my vision darkened around the edges and it was all over and I was fading and dying for real this time.

∞—∞—∞

"There you are." Rolf was there when I woke, frowning down at me from where he knelt at my side. "Well, that was certainly something. You fell straight into that tent pole." He cocked his head to one side, indicating a nearby support beam probably eight inches across, of rough-hewn wood.

That must be why my face hurt so badly. I was dimly aware that I couldn't stop either the silent stream of tears traveling down my cheeks, or my body from trembling. I couldn't feel my fingers. "I know I'm dying, but—" I choked out, trying to save him the trouble explaining things, but realizing partway through that I didn't even know what I wanted to say. My heart beginning to pound again. I couldn't possibly have very long left. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for everything to be over.

"Shh. You're all right." Rolf's voice was soothing, not alarmed or agitated as I'd half expected, as he quickly loosened my belt and fussed with my clothes. To the extent I had capacity to be grateful for anything, I was glad he was here. There were worse people to die with. I supposed that must be the point of death priests, after all.

I felt his hand on my forehead. "You're not dying. Just hang on a moment longer." Rolf murmured something under his breath and I gasped as the unchecked terror flooding my body abruptly melted away. My tension and dread were gone, replaced with a sedate dispassion that didn't feel entirely natural, but was no less of a relief for that fact.

He removed his hand from my head. "Better?"

I nodded weakly.

"I think you had what they call a hysterical episode. Give yourself a second to get a little air. Part of what frightened you so badly was thinking you couldn't breathe. There are few fears, in my experience, quite as immediate and debilitating as that of smothering."

I nodded again, blinking away some of the tears still standing in my eyes. My face still throbbed painfully with each heartbeat, but that was much easier to bear than the looming certainty of imminent death that he had somehow banished.

After a moment Rolf helped me sit up against the tent support. "Attacks like this are terrifying, but you're going to be fine," he said, not sounding very concerned about any of it. "You have a faceful of splinters, and a split lip, and I think you cracked your cheekbone, but those we can fix."

"I'm sorry," I mumbled as he situated himself more comfortably.

"Are you, now." Rolf raised his eyebrows, his mouth turned up in a skeptical way. "And what are _you_ sorry for? I was about to say the same."

"Why?" I tried to think of anything he'd done wrong and came up blank.

"No, now you've piqued my curiosity. You first."

I hesitated, tears pricking my eyes again as I considered to what extent I should burden him with my feelings. "I pushed so hard to try our cure on somebody," I sniffed miserably. "But the real reason was, after I knew you… brought me back, I was hoping you could do that for Britt too. That we could use the cure for him too. But I was afraid to ask. And now, what if people die because of how self-serving I was? What if it was better if we did like Thalia wanted?"

"And now that you're becalmed, does any of that make logical sense? Or are you just repeating what you were thinking about right before you panicked?"

I wiped my eyes as I thought over his question. "Maybe not all of it. But I do know that after I saw your book I was thinking about Britt a lot more than I was my village."

"So?"

I looked at him in confusion.

"Was the treatment we devised based on fact and reason?"

I nodded.

"And if it works, and if it were able to benefit Britt in some way, would it help the other victims any less because of that?"

"I… don't think so."

"So is anyone at an increased risk of dying because your impetus to find a treatment was founded on the private hope that you might also be able to save someone you care about?"

I thought about that. My motivation still felt wrongly selfish, but he had a point. "I guess not."

"In that case—was an apology really necessary?"

"I don't know." I hesitated. "Maybe not to… you specifically. But I'm supposed to be better than this. I have a responsibility. To not put myself first."

Rolf shook his head and scratched idly at his whiskers. "Gods preserve us," he sighed, "from the cynical ideals of the aristocracy."

"Ideals aren't cynical," I objected.

"They are when they're dispensed to people expected to uphold them, by people with little inclination to do so themselves." Rolf reached for a nearby stool and gave himself something to lean against. "Based on the little I know of your life's education, I expect that like most children of your station it involved a disproportionate emphasis on the notion of patrician responsibility, and on your particular moral obligations under this doctrine. I am also guessing you weren't given much instruction as to the practical application of the noblesse oblige you were expected to personify."

He gave me a look of frank appraisal and continued on before I could work out what exactly he was getting at with this distressingly seditious talk. "Because you're a decent person, it's understandable you didn't see all this for the hypocritical horse shit it generally is."

I blinked at him in startled shock. "My father—" I began.

"—had plans for you so inimical to your well-being that you thought death was a kinder fate?"

I opened my mouth to reply, but couldn't think of a valid rebuttal. I shrugged uncomfortably.

Rolf crossed his arms over his chest. "People like your father have enormous incentive to make everyone subscribe to the myth of their superior moral fiber. Including their children," he added with a nod in my direction. "Did he see to your schooling himself, or hire on a governess or some other such person to deal with you?"

I thought then of what Bonnie told my sister—about how Father taught me to read himself. I remembered it, a little, being on his lap, him writing letters on a parchment to show me, knowing instinctively despite being little that I must pay scrupulous attention to everything he said, and be very, very careful not to wet myself while he was holding me. The memory gave me a sad pang.

"Oswin?" Rolf's tone suggested he wasn't so much prompting me for my answer as determining that I was all right.

I shrugged again. "Father doesn't believe in governesses. He thinks they exert an unhealthy influence."

Rolf laughed. "That sounds about right."

I frowned. Nothing he'd said was particularly untrue, but I had the absurd impulse to defend my family all the same. It was ridiculous, and I knew it was ridiculous, and maybe that was why all I did was stare unhappily at my lap. This almost-stranger was sitting here casually disapproving of everything I'd been raised to believe was important. At the same time, he'd shown me more fundamental human decency in our two day acquaintance than my father had for over a year now.

"Sorry, Oswin." Rolf shook his head. "I'm not picking on you. You don't deserve to be subjected to all this rambling, anti-aristocratic sermonizing."

"You're not… wrong exactly. I just…" I fell silent.

Rolf sighed again. "Having ideals isn't wrong. I shouldn't make light of it. In theory, _I_ have them."

I hunched my shoulders and studied the dirt floor, unsure how to reply.

"Just try to remember that ideals are just that—ideal. Nobody taught you that part, probably because for most people of your station the question never arises of how far to take them. So I think you're being too hard on yourself. You're entitled to do so, of course, though I hope you won't."

Part of me felt I should try to process this, but the rest of me was simply too exhausted. Ideal. Not ideal. It didn't seem to even matter anymore.

"All right," he said finally. "You have a broken face and you're in desperate need of some sleep. Let's get you something for the pain." He moved to get up.

"Rolf? What did you mean before, when you said you were going to say sorry? Why?"

Rolf took my hand and began pulling me to my feet. "Just that, despite knowing better, I pulled you along down a mentally and emotionally exhausting rabbit hole, allowed you to forego adequate food and rest for the better part of two days, and even knowing you'd recently experienced an ordeal that would leave most people unable even to function—I still didn't recognize in time that you'd reached the upper limits of your endurance."

With his help I got shakily to my feet.

"I did you a disservice in letting you overexert yourself so thoroughly that it edged you into a terror attack so severe you thought you were dying. I'm sorry for that."

It felt entirely alien that someone my parents' age would apologize to me for anything. I didn't know how to respond, so I settled for a shrug and a quick nod of acknowledgment, and that seemed to suffice.

"Do you still want to see Britt? We can do that first."

My heart skittered again. "I don't know."

"Well, that can keep. You don't have to decide right now."

"But shouldn't I… sooner? Don't people, um." I gestured vaguely, trying to decide if there was a polite way to ask about the natural process of bodily decay. "Start to… smell?"

"Ah," he said when he understood what I was asking. "Without intervention, yes. But if a priest is present it's routine to place preservation spells on deceased persons. It's safer, and more palatable, for the living, to preserve a body until final arrangements can be made."

"Or until…" I hesitated before venturing my next thought. "… final arrangements can be averted?" My mouth was dry by the end of that sentence. I swallowed hard.

Rolf's expression shifted as I spoke. It made me worry he was sizing up how much disappointment I could handle right now.

"Is it… expensive?" I asked when he didn't answer right away. "What you did for me."

"It's costly, yes, although—"

"—I'll find a way to pay you back," I said quickly. "For both of us. I promise. I wouldn't—"

"—the material expense isn't my concern."

"Then I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do anything."

"I know you would." I watched him think, pleading silently in my head the whole time, until he seemed to come to a decision. "I have no objection to working the spell for him, if we settle on a viable cure," he said finally.

Relief surged through me. In another tenday, or maybe less, I would see Britt again. We'd figure out where to go and what to do, and we wouldn't have the same kind of lives, but we would have each other, and it would be enough. I would never, ever again take him the slightest bit for granted. "Thank you," I began in a voice much smaller than I'd intended, then left off and cleared my throat hard. "Truly," I said in a much more normal tone.

Rolf shook his head in dismissal. "However. I need you to listen carefully now."

"Yes. I'm listening," I said promptly. I would do _anything_ he asked after the king's ransom he'd just promised me.

He looked at me intently. "You need to know. This kind of divine alchemy is never a sure thing. If for some reason the person's spirit is unwilling, or unable, to return—it may not work. And if it does, we don't know for certain our treatment will work on someone who has experienced resurrection. It changes a person, not dramatically, in every case—but crossing over is a spiritual ordeal as well as a physical one. It has an impact, sometimes a lasting one. Not to mention, if the treatment doesn't work on our current patients—"

"—I understand. If we can't cure him, it would be pointless and cruel to bring somebody back just to die of the same thing again." I swallowed thickly.

"Yes. I know this conversation feels like a reprieve, but you need to be prepared for the potential that this loss is still a permanent one. It's probably impossible not to get your hopes up, but try to remember that there is no guarantee he can be brought back. All right?"

I nodded.

He was right, though. It was impossible not to get my hopes up.


	12. A Language the Dumb Can Speak

I lay in my my cot, watching Rolf as he set out the ingredients for a tonic he said would dull the throbbing pain in my face. This involved several little glass bottles of varying colors labeled in a language I didn't recognize, a small beaker in which he combined some of them, and a kind of paste from a jar. There was something comforting about seeing him at work, and it took me a little while to realize this was the same feeling that I'd always gotten from hanging about in the kitchen watching Cook do this or that. I must have been annoying, when I was little and constantly underfoot and inquiring as to what she was doing and why, but she'd never been anything but sweet to me all the same.

"What's that?" I asked as he picked up a thin tube of clear glass and dipped it into a small amber-colored bottle. "Is it for stirring? Why is it hollow?"

"Not for stirring," he explained. "It's a dropper. It's used to transfer small amounts of liquid from one container to another. Look." Holding it so I could see, he placed his index finger over its open end and withdrew the dropper, with the rust-colored liquid from the bottle still inside. He held the tube over the beaker, released his finger, and let it run out.

"We used to do that with hollow reeds, down by the creek," I recalled, propping myself up on one elbow to better see what he was doing. "I didn't give much thought to what kind of practical use they might have. We used to fill them up and blow water at each other."

"Your sister and you?"

I nodded, wondering what Jessa was doing right now. "I was too big to be playing like that, but she was only six and she didn't have anyone else to play with."

Rolf rinsed the tube clean with a bit of water. "See for yourself." He handed it to me. "How much younger is she?"

"Eight years."

"Fourteen's not too old to play in creeks."

It was to Mother, but I didn't feel like talking about Mother so instead I examined the little glass tube, about a quarter-inch across, and peered inside, admiring its near-perfect uniformity of thickness and diameter. "Whoever made this was good at their work."

"They're only partially handmade. It's done using magically-tempered metal rods. There's a shop in the south ward of the Gate whose owner devised the method. Probably half the glassmakers on the continent have tried to copy her process."

"What about the other half?"

"They just bought it off her instead. Last I heard she was retired and doing well for herself." He gave the beaker a stir and motioned for me to sit up. "Here. It'll make your face feel better, and help you sleep after I've finished patching you up."

I traded him the little glass tube for the cup of medicine. "Help me sleep?" I hesitated and looked toward the front of the tent as he returned the dropper to the leather sleeve that protected it from breaking in his healer's kit. Thalia and the others were busy moving patients, presumably to cooler places. "How long will it make me sleep?"

"As long as possible, hopefully." Rolf tracked my gaze. "Don't worry. They know what to do for now, and in a minute I'm going to go give Thalia some more instructions and tell her we're going to get some sleep."

"Don't they need the help?"

"If being useful is your concern, you're better off getting a good, long rest while you can. We'll have plenty enough to do once we find out whether we're on the right path. Unlike us, there's enough of them to work in shifts." He motioned for me to drink the elixir. "If they have any questions they can wake me."

"But what if—"

"If something important happens I'll wake you. I won't let you miss anything critical. But for now it's just a waiting game, so you should sleep while you can."

It _was_ sort of a relief to just let someone else make decisions. I nodded and studied the brownish-red liquid in the cup. "This isn't the same thing you gave me before. Right?"

"No, it's a tincture of opium paste. It tastes something like how skunk smells, so I recommend getting it down quick. Usually a gob of honey is added to counter the bitterness, but I don't have any at the present, nor any sugar grains."

I sniffed curiously at it. "It doesn't smell so bad. It reminds me of…" I thought for a second. "… spice cake. Like they make for Midwinter's Eve." I swallowed the liquid in one gulp, then stood there gagging at the terrible, astringent flavor lingering in my mouth. "Gods," I swore, "you weren't joking. That is damned _awful_."

Rolf handed me a cup of water, then took a small envelope from his case as I drank it, and shook something small into his hand. "Here. Have one of these."

They were lemon candies. He handed me one and I stood there staring dumbly at it as a peculiar feeling suddenly washed over me. "Oh. Lemon sweets are my favorite," I told him happily. "My very, very favorite."

"You're feeling it now, I see."

I sucked on the lemon drop as I contemplated this. "I must be. I feel much better than before. My face doesn't hurt."

"Well, good. Lie down, why don't you. I need to go talk to Thalia and take care of a few things. Are you cold?"

"A little."

He draped a camp blanket over me and I stretched out on my front, feeling pleasantly languorous. He knelt to tighten the laces on one of his boots while I rested my chin on my hands and watched.

"Don't feel like you have to stay awake," he told me, standing up. "If you're asleep when I come back I'll wake you just enough to turn on your back so I can get those splinters out."

When he left I surveyed the hospital from my vantage point in our tiny space, not at all private, which I had nonetheless come to think of as our quarters. Thalia and the others were busy moving patients closer to the outer perimeter of the hospital, which I hoped meant they were taking it seriously that everyone should be kept as cool as possible.

Thalia turned when she saw him approach, and I noticed for the first time how differently she held herself with him than the others. With Rolf, it had to be because of his age and evident experience, but it reminded me of how people were around my father. Rolf's bearing, however, was completely unlike Father's. Father knew he was entitled to the deference of others, and that expectation was evident in his every aspect.

As little as I'd wanted to hear it, maybe there really was something to the observation that Father had a lot to gain by duping us all into accepting our responsibility to make noble sacrifices for the good of the family. Or the people. Or the realm. Or whatever else. What sacrifices had Father himself made? Nothing on par with what he had asked of me, that I could see. Was this something he did knowingly? Or did he believe the things he said?

These musings must have kept me occupied for some time, because Rolf returned sooner than I'd expected, looking surprised to see me still up.

"If you'll turn over, I'll pick out the worst of it and fix up your face so you can sleep more comfortably." He reached into his physician's case and withdrew a bundle of cloth, which he placed on the bed stand and unrolled to reveal a variety of small medical instruments.

Distracted from my thoughts of Father, I settled obediently onto my back and studied the canvas ceiling above us, reflecting on my remarkable feeling of well-being. I couldn't decide if it was actually the presence of a good feeling, or just the absence of feeling bad. Maybe the distinction wasn't very important. "Why does this medicine feel so different to the other?" I asked as he took up a magnifying lens and a pair of tweezers. "They're both from sleeping poppy?"

"They're different preparations of the same plant. The soporific I gave you before is a weaker formula, with very little opium." He leaned in and teased a sliver of wood out of my cheek with the tweezers. "This one is stronger, with pain-alleviating properties. In some people it produces a feeling of euphoria."

"Rolf?"

"Yes?" He squinted down at me through the lens.

"It's nice not to feel terrible for a little while."

"I imagine so," he agreed.

"Thank you for being kind to me."

"You shouldn't have to thank people for that."

"But still."

"Well, you're welcome." He looked through the glass again and pulled out another splinter.

"Will I have any interesting scars?" I asked after a moment.

"I don't think so. Why, does that disappoint you?"

"No. If I did, though, I was going to tell Britt I fought with a porcupine." I felt a silly grin creep across my face. "I just hadn't decided to say whether I won or lost. He always says I—oh." I realized my mistake. "Oh. I forgot he died." I fell silent, mulling over my dim awareness that half an hour earlier this would have been an unbearably painful thought.

Rolf lowered the glass and looked down at me. "Perhaps it's best not to dwell too much on that just now. We don't know yet what the future might hold."

I nodded and he resumed his work. After a while something else occurred to me. "What's my leg made of now?"

"That's a good question," Rolf mused as he surveyed his roll of instruments and selected something small. I eyed it through the magnifying glass. A sewing needle. "I'm not entirely sure. I wish I had a better answer for you."

"Not bone, I think."

"No, or at least not entirely. It's solid, and the weight is about right, but it lacks the texture and feel of bone. It reminds me of wood, although obviously that can't be the case. I'm not certain whether it's technically still living or not."

"It's smooth, like stone, except it's not heavy. Or as cold to the touch as it should be," I added. "It feels strange. Like it's not truly part of me."

Rolf frowned down through the glass, chewing his lip as he listened. "Your case is an odd one, to be sure. I had to improvise in more ways than one."

"How so?" I looked up at him, curious.

It was a moment before he spoke. "Well, for starters this is the first curse I've encountered that felt like it was resisting attack."

"It _what_?" This was the first he'd mentioned this.

"Hard to describe, even if you already knew what healing magic was supposed to feel like." His eyes hadn't left the splinter he was working on right now, but he clicked his tongue thoughtfully, as if trying to settle on the right way to say what he meant. "When administering restorative magic, the practitioner is intimately attuned to the body of the person they are healing. You can feel, generally, whether it is working, and how much power you need to commit, and to where. Obviously the more severe the injury or affliction, the more force is needed. In the presence of disease, or of curses I'd come across before now, a good healer can sense corruption in the body and focus their power on it."

He stopped and glanced down at me, as if seeing whether his explanation made any sort of sense to me. "I'll stop if you're too tired. Or bored."

I shook my head no. I wanted very much to hear more about this.

"All right, then. There's no particularly good way to explain it, but most disease, at least in my experience, has a passivity to it. Even illnesses like cancer, which actively spread to attack healthy flesh in their victims—their malignance feels inert. When the appropriate force is brought to bear…" He paused to think. "…there's a certain sense impression of…a yielding. As the pestilence gives way."

"But this felt different?"

"Almost… combative." He glanced at me. "I had the unsettling impression that whatever was pushing back expected to win. I'm aware that sounds patently insane, by the way," he added, "which is part of why I haven't mentioned this to Thalia or the others. I didn't sleep much in the two days it took me to get to you, and I haven't slept much more than you have since you woke. I'm not entirely sure I didn't imagine the whole thing. I was expecting a run of the mill broken leg, and all the rest caught me off guard." He continued tweezing.

I thought fuzzily about this, trying to understand what he'd described. "You mean it felt… alive? It sensed you and knew you meant to destroy it?"

There was a short silence as Rolf considered the question. "Gods, it _really_ sounds deranged hearing it from someone else's mouth." He shook his head. "No, I'm just sleep deprived. I didn't intend to suggest the affliction is some kind of intelligent malevolence. I don't believe that's even possible."

"Why not?"

"Such a thing would be the stuff of legend. The kind of power it would require is monumental. A curse like that would require too much initial magical force, and too much energy to maintain, for it to be communicable like this." He sighed and scratched at his head.

"The way you talk about it makes me think of one of those worms that lives inside an aurochs calf and keeps it from putting on any weight, and then when they give up on the animal and do the butchering they find the worm inside and it's grown to about three fathoms because it was eating all the calf's food itself." I shuddered. "Have you ever seen one of those?"

He stopped, tweezers still in hand, frowning thoughtfully at me. "I have." He fell silent for a long moment, then seemed to remember our conversation just as I was making up my mind to ask what he was thinking. "You draw a fitting parallel," he said slowly. "It _wasn't_ altogether unlike treating a person or an animal for a worm, or something like it. A _disease_ isn't an independent living organism. It proceeds in a more or less orderly fashion, and can thus be eliminated, once one understands its particular mechanism." He leaned over to get a better angle at my opposite cheek. "But I am aware of no living creature, no matter how small, which doesn't do its strenuous best to adapt a defense against its own destruction." He seemed to consider the analogy further as he drew out another splinter. "You're not wrong. It did feel a little like killing a parasite."

"Is that why healing magic doesn't work on it? You said it felt like the thing thought it was going to win."

"It's possible the two could be related. But I think you're reacting more to my failure to explain it adequately than—" He left off, an expression of concentration on his features, and I wondered whether he was about to say something extremely interesting, until I felt an unsettling sensation as he tugged at something so firmly wedged in my face that it seemed part of my features. This must be the thing that had required a change of tools. It occurred to me that with the pain tonic he'd given me, this feeling of odd pressure was what I felt instead of agonizing pain.

"I have to hand it to you, Oswin," he said after a moment, rolling my head gently to face away from him. "You don't do anything by half measures."

"What do you mean?" I started to turn my head back to better look at him.

"No, no, hold still. You have a jagged piece of wood probably an inch long, stuck in your cheek, which seems to have made it all the way down to the bone. It's frankly quite an upsetting looking injury. I think this is where most of the blood came from." He peered down at me before turning away to exchange the needle for the tweezers. "I was mostly just winding you up," he said in answer to my question. "But you do seem to throw all your weight into every punch."

I couldn't make a face, since I was supposed to be holding still, so I settled for furrowing my brow as dubiously as possible. "You make me sound a lot braver than I am."

He snorted. "Let's review your recent history. Your parents decided to wed you to a lord you've never met, for money. So you ran away from home. When your betrothed declined to accompany you, you seized on the tiny scrap of agency you still had, rather than give up and trudge dutifully back home to be married off. Not to mention, there are less flamboyant ways to kill oneself. You woke up in a ditch with a compound leg fracture and a virulent magical illness, and somehow rallied enough to rattle off a prayer that caught the attention of a major deity before quaffing a fortnight's worth of sleeping potions. I don't think you're hurting for tenacity or fortitude. So I suppose it only follows that when you needed to faint you singled out the biggest, roughest surface you could find and threw yourself straight into it."

"Ah. There." Rolf gave a final tug with the tweezers and I felt him press a clean rag to my face as he removed the splinter he'd been working on. "Can you believe I spent nearly ten minutes on this thing?" He showed me the offending object, a large shard of wood, slimy with my blood.

"Ugh. That's repulsive."

"Disgusting, isn't it?" he agreed. "I'm not a surgeon by training. This is a particular triumph." He lifted up the rag to look at the wound before quickly pressing it back down. "That's a hell of a bleeder."

"Gods, I'm sorry I'm so much bother," I said. "I didn't mean to…" I stopped to think what it was I was apologizing for, and what I came up with made me laugh. "… die and smash my face into a pole and all of it?"

Rolf deposited the huge splinter on his instrument tray and peered down at me. "Asking out of curiosity, are you truly not sleepy right now? That tonic makes most people drowsy."

"No. I feel… weightless. It's very nice. But I feel actually… a little less tired than before. Mostly I feel like talking. I'm a little batty right now, maybe," I allowed. "It took me a lot of concentration to pay good attention earlier, because I wanted to hear about—" I suddenly recalled that we hadn't finished talking about the curse.

"What is it?" He wet another rag and wiped some of the blood from my face with it.

"What else were you going to say? About the curse, when you fixed my leg? You said you thought you imagined what you felt. But what if you didn't?"

"Oh. There really wasn't much more to it. I expect it sounded more alarming than it is because I didn't explain it very well—partly because it's hard when you don't have any context for what I'm describing anyway. I was observing it more as an oddity than anything." He sighed and scratched at his head. "The fact I even mentioned such a flight of fancy must mean I'm as worn out as you are." He eyed me. "Which you are, whether you feel it right now or not."

"Did you get all the splinters?" I asked instead of pursuing the subject.

"The worst of them. The little ones I can extract magically. The big ones I preferred to remove by hand since they would require vigor I don't feel up to expending at present. You're lucky you can't see your face right now, though. Having gotten a closer look, I think you cracked your eye socket as well as your cheekbone. You look perfectly hideous."

"Well, now you make me _want_ to see," I complained. "Wait, do you have a glass? Can I?"

"If you thought that splinter was disgusting, you're going to hate this." But he reached into his kit and withdrew a small round mirror, which he handed to me.

"Oh my gods, it's so perfect looking. Is this a quicksilver glass?" I turned it over to examine the back and was mildly disappointed to see it set in a decorative case of mother of pearl. I traced my finger over the shiny, iridescent surface anyway. "Britt told me about these," I told him eagerly. They make them by coating sheets of tin with—what?" I looked up, perplexed, when I realized Rolf was laughing aloud. "Did I say something wrong?"

"Not even a bit," he said, still laughing. "I'm just appreciating your defiance of convention."

I shook my head, confused.

"Society at large, and I am not claiming representative rights to that particular group, mind you—might expect a young woman, handed a looking glass, to use its reflective surface to examine her person."

I wrinkled my nose at him. "Well… I'm still going to do that."

"I thought you might. I merely observed that the fervor of your zeal for identifying the particular means of a given object's manufacture is of an atypical bent." He took the glass from me and popped it out of its protective backing. "A refreshingly atypical bent, if I wasn't clear about that. Here." He handed it back.

"Oh!" I smoothed one finger over the coating. "This is beautiful. He said they dissolve elemental silver into the quicksilver and—" I looked up to see Rolf smiling broadly down at me. "—oh. You must already know that." I was inordinately pleased with this realization. "It's _nice_ ," I bubbled happily, "talking to somebody who knows things."

"Do you want to look at your face, or not?"

"Oh, right—" I turned the mirror around. "—my gods, that is ghastly!" I held it closer, examining the bloody wound where he'd extracted the shard of wood. "I'm half surprised I didn't lose an eye." I regarded my smashed-up face with surreal delight. "That is _monstrous_ looking. My mother would utterly _die_ if she saw this. Thank you for letting me look." I held the glass out for him.

Rolf accepted it and replaced its casing. "Well, if you had lost an eye, let us enter into the formal record that you've already furnished more than enough entertainment for me to warrant the expenditure of divine force it would require to restore your sight."

"Oh, I don't know. An eye patch might lend me an alluring air of mystery."

"You already have a lame leg. My advice is, don't press your luck."

"Good point. Still—" But as I drew breath to loose my next thought, he held up a hand to quiet me.

"Even if _you_ still feel chatty, I'm half dead for lack of sleep. I'm going to patch up your face and then let's save the rest for tomorrow. All right?"

I nodded compliantly. "Rolf?"

"Yes?"

"I love being drugged. It's very nice."

"I'll be sure to remember that." Rolf finished putting away his instruments and turned back to me. "Not that your talking isn't an agreeable diversion, but if you'll give me a few minutes of quiet, this will go a little faster." He set one hand gently on either side of my face and closed his eyes in concentration. I watched, curious, until I felt a pleasant, lulling warmth that made me wonder if he was doing as he'd described earlier—the sensing out and repairing. I wanted to ask whether healing an injury was different to healing sickness or disease, but recalled just as I opened my mouth that I was supposed to be quiet. So instead I let my eyes drift peacefully shut, feeling proud of myself for remembering.

By the time he was through I was starting to feel a little sleepy myself, but I opened my eyes again when he let go of me and yawned, stretching his shoulders one side at a time. "You still have a bit of a black eye, but the bones are knit back together. It'll do for now."

I raised my hand to my face and was surprised to find my cheeks, no longer swollen up and studded with tiny projectiles, but peppered with little bits of something. I pinched some between my fingers to look at it, but what I saw confused me. "Is this… sawdust?"

"Oh, sorry. Gods, but I must be exhausted. That was sloppy. Close your eyes." Rolf dusted the little wood particles from my face with a soft cloth, catching them in his hand so they wouldn't fall into my bed. "You don't want to keep any of this, do you? Or that big piece of wood?"

"Gods, no, whatever for?"

"Good." He opened his hand and flicked its contents to the ground. "Some people like to hang on to the instruments of their wounding, as if such things were some kind of talisman against future occurrences of the same. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I never understood it myself."

I realized with sudden fascination that the fine powdering of wood dust was the remains of the splinters he'd removed from my face. "Not much honor in being vanquished by a wood beam that was just minding its own business until I came along." I touched my face again and felt smooth, unbroken skin. "Thank you, for this."

Rolf gave me a half smile. "Trust me, I was doing myself a favor. You were pretty hard on the eyes."

I made a face.

"Pardon me. I meant: you're welcome."

I turned and looked west, where I could see from the light filtering into the tent that the sun was low in the sky, but not yet set. "It feels funny, going to bed when the sun isn't even down."

"Maybe to you," he told me. "I for one plan to remain unconscious until I wake on my own, or until some emergency arises—hopefully the former. I recommend you attempt to do the same."

"Rolf?"

"Hmm." He was busy shaking out his blanket and didn't turn to look at me.

"I could see straight up your nose through your magnifying lens. The whole time."

"Oswin?" he inquired, still without turning.

"What?"

"Don't make me cast a sleep spell on you to shut you up."

I smiled and pulled my blanket around me, contemplating the mysterious power he had, after only two days, to make me feel like things might work out all right in the end.

∞—∞—∞

"Oswin. Wake up." I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me back to consciousness.

I squinted groggily up at Rolf. It was dark, still, so I was looking at him by the dim light of the torches stationed at intervals throughout the hospital tent. "What's going on?"

"Delger's first dose of sleeping draught is starting to wear off."

"Right. Yes. Good," I agreed, willing my limbs to move.

"Oswin?" I heard again after a short moment. "It's been ten minutes."

Oh. "Right. I'm getting up. I am, I promise. I'm just…" I trailed off as I tried to summon some strength into my body.

I felt Rolf tucking the blanket in more snugly around me. "Here, never mind. Stay and sleep a while longer. There won't be any developments for some time yet, and gods know, you need the rest. I just didn't want you to feel you missed anything."

Forcing my eyes open, I stifled a yawn and stretched. "No, you're right. I want to be there if anything happens." I made myself get up on one elbow so I couldn't fall back asleep this time. "It's sort of convenient, sleeping in my clothes," I said a moment later, sitting up and pulling my blanket around me against the early morning chill. "I don't have to get properly dressed."

I watched with sleepy curiosity as he took a waxed paper envelope from his pack and shook something from it into a heavy earthenware mug. "Sadly, I didn't have any for you last night, but I was able to get my hands on a bit of sugar this morning." He added a generous shake of sugar from a little jar, then took a kettle off a small portable brazier at the foot of his cot and poured a steaming liquid into the cup.

"Oh. You didn't have to do that," I said in surprise.

Rolf shrugged. "I have it on good authority that you have a taste for sweets." He stirred the cup and handed it to me. "And you've had a difficult few days. This'll warm you up."

I nodded and ducked my head, embarrassed at what a sentimental dummy I was lately, and how pathetically grateful for any little scrap of niceness from another person. I wasn't hiding it very well, how near tears the gesture brought me, but Rolf was polite enough to pretend he didn't notice.

"Oh," I said aloud, forgetting all that as soon as I tasted the hot drink. "What _is_ this?" It was sweet, and rich, and thick like cream. I had never tasted anything remotely like it. "It's not…" I fell silent, trying to concentrate on the flavor.

"It's a thing from Calimshan. They call it _joccolat_."

"It's _really_ good."

"Well, I'm glad you think so. I thought you might like it." Rolf sat down on the edge of his cot to wait for me.

"How long have you been up?" I was caught between wanting to find out whether Delger's condition had improved, and being reluctant to finish this remarkable drink too quickly.

"Oh, an hour, maybe. I woke up with a thought I couldn't shake and after a few minutes of that running through my head I was up for good."

"That happens to me sometimes, too. What… was it? If it's all right to ask," I added hastily, regretting the question as soon as it left my mouth. He'd probably given me incredible latitude for being annoying and forward last night because I'd been doped to the gills. I'd already put him out in myriad ways. The least I could do was not ask intrusive questions.

Rolf shook his head as if it weren't important. "Oh, I'm not sure yet. I'll tell you if it amounts to anything. Likely it won't."

In other words, it was none of my business. I bobbed my head in quiet understanding, peeking up at him through lowered lashes, wishing I knew how to ask why his smile seemed so forced.


End file.
